Is it possible to show time passing in an RPG?

[madwarper]

But I've found that RPGs are pretty bad at showing the passage of time. One of the great things about Half Life 2 is there's always a sense of time passing, mornings become middays become nights and it's clear that Freeman is taking a journey that's very much taking place in time.

But, that's not a mechanic of time progression, it's simply tied to the plot.

Ravenholm will always be night. It doesn't matter how many hours you are in there, it won't ever be day or play any differently.

 

[BrotherRool]

But I've found that RPGs are pretty bad at showing the passage of time. One of the great things about Half Life 2 is there's always a sense of time passing, mornings become middays become nights and it's clear that Freeman is taking a journey that's very much taking place in time.

But, that's not a mechanic of time progression, it's simply tied to the plot.

Ravenholm will always be night. It doesn't matter how many hours you are in there, it won't ever be day or play any differently.

This is actually very important, it's why day/night cycles don't work (at the moment) and why it would be so hard to get a sense of time in RPGs. Having the world visibly turn to night around you is not how we experience day/night and in fact, except for an hour or two around dawn/dusk we're almost never aware of the day changing, what happens is we notice it in discrete blocks if we notice it at all. We look up at the sky and notice the sun is in a different position and we say things like 'it's getting late' or 'wow look how dark it's got'.

More importantly the only two games with day/night cycles that have felt natural to me are Minecraft and The Sims and I believe it's because those games are designed to make you feel like you've done roughly a days worth of action. Whereas no level in Half Life 2 was ever an entire day/night of action (in fact you can tell by the position of the sun =D, most actions in Half Life 2 were worth a couple of hours. The only exceptions I believe are the travelling sections, where a day passes whilst travelling)

A day/night cycle would have screwed up the planning aspect of Half Life 2, if some player messed around in Ravenholm for ages then the idea that the game takes places in a little under a week would change, and the timescale of all the other levels.


I think we're talking at cross purposes here. I don't want day/night cycles necessarily, I don't want to have a 'night' way to play the world and a 'day' way necessarily. I'm not looking for play variety as much as I am for a sense of realness.

Because there's something special about games that convey a sense of time, it can give a real sense of progression and position, and I don't mean time in the small scale like Ravenholm, but the sense of time as in Freeman has walked a days distance today. In FFX they do it (not as well) but you have morning and evening areas along your journey to make it feel like this is a journey that happens in time.


It's pretty easier to do in linear games and really they need to do it more often, you just need to have areas with appropriate levels of lighting at appropriate time periods.


But open RPGs are unstructured, so my question is basically, how can you convey a realistic sense of time in them?



This is just an idea I've had right now and I'm interested if you think it would be stupid/gameplay annoying. But a way to really improve the day/night cycle thing, would be to get rid of the night part. Okay okay that sounds stupid, I mean that it would be morning and then get along to evening but when night actually falls, your guy sets up a tent and goes to sleep till the morning. There would need to be gameplay tweaks (it would be a good place to put party interactions/cutscenes too) maybe you get a little sleep progress so people don't get annoyed with it. And it would have to be adjusted so you feel like you can get a good days worth of activities in, instead of just spending the whole day hunting rats. Also it would need enough of a gameplay element that people don't feel like it's pointless. Maybe you can try and find a particularly good place to camp for the night.

It would solve a problem with the day/night cycle in that normally your character isn't greatly affected by it and the fact that generally humans don't spend a lot of time in the night, but skip through it sleeping. And games that require you to get to an Inn or something are irritating because it takes you out of your way and stops whatever you're planning to do now.

So I think the idea that your character actually sets up a tent and sleeps might be a nice way to make the world feel real

 

[felbot]

well fallout had a clock like that, it didn't do much except for giving you a time limit but it is there so it can certainly work.

 

[TheDuckbunny]

Animal Crossing has a great sense of time. A lot of its gameplay mechanics directly involve time and NPC's actually acknowledge game time passing. If you take 5 hours to do a small chore for an NPC they will ask you why it took so long. If you don't play for a week and then come back they will ask you where you've been and NPC's might have actually left your town in that time.

Mount and Blade also has a great sense of time. When you travel on the overworld map day turns into night and you start to travel at a slower pace. If you're travelling from one city to the next you really feel like days are passing and your troops need food and drinks and their morale decreases after a long time of travel.

And I like that in Skyrim bandits take over ruins after a couple of days. When I returned to Helgen in my first game and saw that bandits had taken over the place it felt like the world was changing dynamically with time.

 

[RufusMcLaser]

its the main thing im hoping for in the industry.

animals that behave normally, needing to eat, and drink or they die. where things grow properly where people harvest their crops and build and expand their farms. basically a dynamic world

I think I would buy a game in which this dynamic world, and how you interact with it, is the gameplay. I don't mean funny island simulators like Tropico, I mean a serious game with the option to go and visit the game world in first person from time to time. Crunchy like a flight sim, not arcade-y like Battlefield.

 

[Joccaren]

This is just an idea I've had right now and I'm interested if you think it would be stupid/gameplay annoying. But a way to really improve the day/night cycle thing, would be to get rid of the night part. Okay okay that sounds stupid, I mean that it would be morning and then get along to evening but when night actually falls, your guy sets up a tent and goes to sleep till the morning. There would need to be gameplay tweaks (it would be a good place to put party interactions/cutscenes too) maybe you get a little sleep progress so people don't get annoyed with it. And it would have to be adjusted so you feel like you can get a good days worth of activities in, instead of just spending the whole day hunting rats. Also it would need enough of a gameplay element that people don't feel like it's pointless. Maybe you can try and find a particularly good place to camp for the night.

Eh, I wouldn't do it quite like that. A lot of people do stuff during the night, or work night shifts and sleep through the day. More likely it should be that your character requires sleep. You can go days without sleep, or maybe a week, but after a certain point [Say... 12-14 in game hours] your stats temporarily deteriorate. You walk slower, hit weaker, and eventually your vision goes blurry. This allows you to set up your own sleep cycle, perform overnight missions if you have to, or get a sense that you've been walking a long time, rather than in games like Skyrim where it feels like you've been walking 5 minutes even though you've just watched 4 days pass.

Another way to make Day/Night seem important, and to give a sense of time progression, is to have events that happen in 'x' days or nights. At this point, you begin paying attention to the time, and how much you have left, whereas generally you don't. Hell, it could even be a completely passive thing, say in Skyrim after you complete one mission in a quest chain, you need to wait a few days, or weeks, before you can do the next, dependent on what the activity is. Having things have time delays when things become available helps in a similar regard to sleeping in that it breaks up your activities so that you feel like you've accomplished a set of work that is equivalent to a period of time. For example, the College of Winterhold. I did that quest chain in one sitting. It felt like I'd spent one day and become the Grand High Archwizard dude. Splitting it so that there is more padding in between, having to wait for people to examine that object before anything happens, and progressing with the quest in a way that feels like you've spent time at the College, and are worthy of becoming archmage rather than you were just the guy who happened to be there at the time.
In fact, that is one thing that padding can do in games if done right. It can make it feel like time has passed, and split up the story so it isn't always at breakneck pace of things happening, and there is actually a period of time for such things to happen.

Spoiler: Half Life 1

Launching the Satellite in HL1 and then getting to Lambda 5-10 minutes later and finding out it hadn't worked wouldn't be satisfying. How in the hell had that Satellite managed to launch, and perform its function, in 5-10 minutes? The extra, well, padding between launching the Satellite and getting to Lambda makes it seem feasible, and like time has actually passed

 

[BrotherRool]

Eh, I wouldn't do it quite like that. A lot of people do stuff during the night, or work night shifts and sleep through the day. More likely it should be that your character requires sleep. You can go days without sleep, or maybe a week, but after a certain point [Say... 12-14 in game hours] your stats temporarily deteriorate. You walk slower, hit weaker, and eventually your vision goes blurry. This allows you to set up your own sleep cycle, perform overnight missions if you have to, or get a sense that you've been walking a long time, rather than in games like Skyrim where it feels like you've been walking 5 minutes even though you've just watched 4 days pass.

Another way to make Day/Night seem important, and to give a sense of time progression, is to have events that happen in 'x' days or nights. At this point, you begin paying attention to the time, and how much you have left, whereas generally you don't. Hell, it could even be a completely passive thing, say in Skyrim after you complete one mission in a quest chain, you need to wait a few days, or weeks, before you can do the next, dependent on what the activity is. Having things have time delays when things become available helps in a similar regard to sleeping in that it breaks up your activities so that you feel like you've accomplished a set of work that is equivalent to a period of time. For example, the College of Winterhold. I did that quest chain in one sitting. It felt like I'd spent one day and become the Grand High Archwizard dude. Splitting it so that there is more padding in between, having to wait for people to examine that object before anything happens, and progressing with the quest in a way that feels like you've spent time at the College, and are worthy of becoming archmage rather than you were just the guy who happened to be there at the time.
In fact, that is one thing that padding can do in games if done right. It can make it feel like time has passed, and split up the story so it isn't always at breakneck pace of things happening, and there is actually a period of time for such things to happen.

They're good ideas and they definitely need to show up in some games, I'm a super unhardcore gamer though and get stressed about by mission time limits. I think your Skyrim system could work really well though, providing there was a very easy way to sleep (and it also looked good, so tents). I think there's a special feeling to traipsing through the night and collapsing in an Inn, or walking off into unexplored territory, setting up a tent and waking up with dawn just coming. Your thing about Skyrim where it feels like you've walked for 5 minutes but the time the game says passed is absurd and completely disconnected is exactly the sort of thing I want games to solve and your solution seems good.


I think having to wait x days before you can do the next mission wouldn't give such a good feeling, unless it was only for certain missions, I know lots of people who complain about having to level before you can do the next Guild Wars story mission and the disconnect it creates, but I think your idea of padding could be perfect. Not padding as in, 'go away and do x sidequests' but if you have to go on a hike that lasts do in game days. Or travel to another city that takes an ingame week, or they give you a big challenge like 'clean up this town' which contains a weeks worth of activities.

I actually think it makes quests so much cooler if you're thinking that your character spent weeks/months planning and plotting to take down the chief wizard etc.

Also if you combine it with an even bigger focus on things like this

And I like that in Skyrim bandits take over ruins after a couple of days. When I returned to Helgen in my first game and saw that bandits had taken over the place it felt like the world was changing dynamically with time.

How cool would that be? So you stock up a load of events that happen in the days/weeks it took you to do x. Maybe someone becomes richer, other people have a dispute, an small force of guards whose captain your quest made you replace with a drunk becomes more raggedy and unorganised as the days pass.

The trick would be to keep unannoying and small enough scale that people don't try to game it (so don't have merchants pop up with super items/change stock as times pass, otherwise people will start wasting time and messing around with the clock to get those items) but neat enough that they're noticeable and give a really nice sense of the world changing.


And if you tie a lot of it into the main quest line, rather than completely relying on the games count, so maybe there are quite major changes (but not necessarily related to the main quests events directly) that occur as you do it, it might help feel like the main quest took 6 weeks/ 4 months whatever

 

[Joccaren]

I think having to wait x days before you can do the next mission wouldn't give such a good feeling, unless it was only for certain missions, I know lots of people who complain about having to level before you can do the next Guild Wars story mission and the disconnect it creates, but I think your idea of padding could be perfect. Not padding as in, 'go away and do x sidequests' but if you have to go on a hike that lasts do in game days. Or travel to another city that takes an ingame week, or they give you a big challenge like 'clean up this town' which contains a weeks worth of activities.

As I said, it would depend on the task. There is a bit of a difference between an arbitrary level disconnect in an MMO like Guild Wars 2, and a timed disconnect for certain parts of quests.
As an example, there are a number of games I've played where someone tells you to get something. You go find it. You bring it back to them. They say they will need some time to examine it, because its an ancient artifact or something, before they can determine what it means. Quest marker appears above their head the second that you stop talking to them. In the half second it took you to speak to them again, they've translated an entire forgotten language and found out where you need to go. That's also a disconnect that makes no sense. Of course, padding works well here, however that forces you to focus on purely that story line. For some things that makes sense. For others its unnecessary, and you time would be better spent travelling to another part of the world and doing some work there. Each would fit well with a different type of quests.
And along the lines of time limits, I was thinking more along the lines of, say Assassinating the Emperor or something. You can't just pick up the quest and suddenly the Emperor's hear, even though nobody knew nothing of it before hand. You get the quest maybe a week before the Emperor arrives, and you have that time to prepare if you need to, or to do a couple of other things before you go kill the Emperor. Not so much a limit on how long you have to do things, but more giving you a window of opportunity that comes around that you need to take advantage of - and in some cases it could be rather generous. The Emperor wouldn't just tour up for 20 minutes then head home, he'd likely head up early so he himself could prepare for whatever event called him up, and to see how his Vassal State is doing, then participate in the event, and then pack up and head home - as opposed to things just happening to have happened with no warning so that there is no time between with the quest. Again, something else padding can work with, but it means you have to focus on purely that quest line, and if you bugger off and do something else in the mean time it causes a minor disconnect and loss of sense of time.

I actually think it makes quests so much cooler if you're thinking that your character spent weeks/months planning and plotting to take down the chief wizard etc.

Hehe, that just reminded me of The Colour of Magic. Now that book/movie's Tower of Wizardry arch is something that would have been hilariously to play through.

How cool would that be? So you stock up a load of events that happen in the days/weeks it took you to do x. Maybe someone becomes richer, other people have a dispute, an small force of guards whose captain your quest made you replace with a drunk becomes more raggedy and unorganised as the days pass.

The trick would be to keep unannoying and small enough scale that people don't try to game it (so don't have merchants pop up with super items/change stock as times pass, otherwise people will start wasting time and messing around with the clock to get those items) but neat enough that they're noticeable and give a really nice sense of the world changing.

And if you tie a lot of it into the main quest line, rather than completely relying on the games count, so maybe there are quite major changes (but not necessarily related to the main quests events directly) that occur as you do it, it might help feel like the main quest took 6 weeks/ 4 months whatever

Indeed. Sometimes a game will randomize the items a store has, but often its nothing really noticeable, and not tied to anything, or its too short a schedual. There are different seasons for different things to be produced, and having some items be rare in Summer, but Common in Winter, and vice versa, would be an interesting mechanic in the game, and having your actions actually change things, and have the world slowly reacting to them, is something that more games really should do.

 

[johnnyLupine]

I would have to say that I think they managed to show the progression of time fairly well in Fable and while it is not strictly an rpg mortal kombat deception did have an rpg element to it which did allow for the player to experience the passage of time in two ways, firstly through meditation which caused the world to speed by in a haze, allowing days, months and even years to pass by, for certain chests to appear it had to be a certain time time or year. The second was similar to Fable in that it took place as a part of the storyline.

 

[NiPah]

First game I thought about was Rune Factory, an JRPG mixed with Harvest Moon elements (made by the same people). You would have to go to bed at night or your character slept in, not sleeping resulted in fatigue then collapsing and the possibility of catching a cold. Seasons would change in the game and there was the element of building up a farm.

Not every game would be good with realistic time changes, it adds a certain charm and immersion but in the end I don't think its required or even worth the substantial effort needed to put it into games without specific mechanics tied to the passing of seasons.

 

[Padwolf]

I'm not too sure if it counts or not, but Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life on gamecube kind of does that. Admittedly the seasons change, but the people in the village all age and you get a sense of the years going by. The villagers also acknowledge the time going by.

Animal Crossing also has a great sense of time, if you don't play for a long time, they will ask you where the devil have you been. If it takes you a few hours to get something done for one of them, they will point it out to you. Also the town will start to grow weeds if you miss a day there. Don't miss a day there. Really. I missed a few months once, took me 2 and a half hours to completely clear all the weeds.

 

[BrotherRool]

As an example, there are a number of games I've played where someone tells you to get something. You go find it. You bring it back to them. They say they will need some time to examine it, because its an ancient artifact or something, before they can determine what it means. Quest marker appears above their head the second that you stop talking to them. In the half second it took you to speak to them again, they've translated an entire forgotten language and found out where you need to go. That's also a disconnect that makes no sense. Of course, padding works well here, however that forces you to focus on purely that story line. For some things that makes sense. For others its unnecessary, and you time would be better spent travelling to another part of the world and doing some work there. Each would fit well with a different type of quests.

Yeah actually, whenever that happens in games it's just completely ridiculous. I still think it can't be completely passive, maybe the best thing is to have the maker need to be resupplied with something so you have to go out and get him things. Or just have another thing to do in the meantime. (unless the task is only a day or two, that would be fine just to make you wait

And along the lines of time limits, I was thinking more along the lines of, say Assassinating the Emperor or something. You can't just pick up the quest and suddenly the Emperor's hear, even though nobody knew nothing of it before hand. You get the quest maybe a week before the Emperor arrives, and you have that time to prepare if you need to, or to do a couple of other things before you go kill the Emperor. Not so much a limit on how long you have to do things, but more giving you a window of opportunity that comes around that you need to take advantage of - and in some cases it could be rather generous. The Emperor wouldn't just tour up for 20 minutes then head home, he'd likely head up early so he himself could prepare for whatever event called him up, and to see how his Vassal State is doing, then participate in the event, and then pack up and head home - as opposed to things just happening to have happened with no warning so that there is no time between with the quest. Again, something else padding can work with, but it means you have to focus on purely that quest line, and if you bugger off and do something else in the mean time it causes a minor disconnect and loss of sense of time.

This one though, this one is seriously cool, if you make it so the Emperor's a decent challenge once he's settled in but there's stuff you can do in the week before to make it weaker if you want. So you can go off but with it becoming a bit harder. I would completely love a game like that. The perfect thing about your idea here is it's not even just giving a sense of time passing but there is narratively appropriate action that you're actually using that time for. It's not just a sign saying 'he prepared for a week' but you can actually prepare for a week.

Times like this make me wish you could just pop games into existence by wanting them

Not every game would be good with realistic time changes, it adds a certain charm and immersion but in the end I don't think its required or even worth the substantial effort needed to put it into games without specific mechanics tied to the passing of seasons.

I feel like it's something every game (of pretty much every story based genre) should consider and then be rejected if inappropriate. You don't have to go full out on a big system, like winter and seasons and depending on the game you can get away with very little. For example all linear games should take a long look at Half-Life and decide if that's the sort of feeling that would be appropriate for their game. For example, a lot of Uncharted could probably be improved by this because there's often a sense of journeying there. And in the case of linear games you don't have to make any kind of system at all, all you need to do is design it so that certain levels have certain times of the day, like Half Life 2. So you just have a midday skybox and lighting for one part and then a sunset skybox and lightning for a part that comes after that.

Other games, like a lot of the military shooters, wouldn't want to put over that experience. Their missions take place over the period of a couple of hours and it's implied that a lot of days pass inbetween them, you don't want time progression their.

As far as RPGs go, linear RPGs based on journy's should completely be attempted this. FFX did it very nicely and it's very very cheap to implement.

As far as open RPGs go, I'm more convinced that they should try something. Lots of them have day/night cycles already, they just need to make them make more sense, and those sort, that are based around trying to create the illusion of a living world, could really benefit. And in some cases the benefit can be huge. The day/night cycle is absolutely integral to the enjoyment of Minecraft.

I agree that the big changes though, the 10 years later or the seasons, would be very expensive to implement and often wouldn't be worth the investment

 

[The Wykydtron]

Wellll you could always go down the Persona 4 route of just going April 20 > April 21 all the way 'til the end of the game.

Though that game is really time-centred, so every day is important.

Speaking of time, anyone remember Dead Rising's godawful time constraints? Who thought those were a good idea?

Thinking about it, the standard WRPG way of just waiting in a spot for ages as you click the "wait 24 hours" button is a bit weird... I remember getting super stuck in Oblivion and practically spending months in one spot. I was trying to make some guy appear during the night since it's a midnight quest and darn it was not happening.

Not gonna say it breaks my immersion or anything, but you have to admit that literally standing still in the desert for The Sun to rise is a bit crazy. I suppose you can imagine you set a camp or something but still.