[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [FreeCiv-Cvs] per: Adding generalised calendar. Calendars can now ... (PR#1964)

[Bart Coppens <martinusaso.asse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 23 August 2002 22:03, Mike Kaufman wrote:
> What complicates things immensely is when you require a calendar to handle
> units of time that are different than mm:dd:yy hh:mm:ss system.
>
> -mike
I came up with this list with possible problems and things worth paying 
attention to, I don't know of these count as 'different':

 -Leap years: If a scenario uses 1 day / turn, there should be the possibility 
of leap years. This could make this scenario more realistic, not only if it 
were a scenario using 'normal' leap years (29th Februar), but scenarios using 
complicated systems should also be possible.
An example of other systems is, for examle, Tolkien's Elven calendar. They 
have 3 'middle-days'. Every twelth year, these days are doubled, making a 
total of 6 middle-days that year. Also, every third yén, there were only 3 
middle-days.

 -Different lengths of weeks, months, years, etc.
This one seems to be very obvious: some cultures have longer or shorter weeks, 
months, etc. For example, some ancient cultures (like the Celts iirc) use the 
synodical (29 1/2 days) or the sidereal (27 1/3) month based on the 
movement/position of the moon.
The Hobbits use months months of 30 days, and weeks of 6 days. Cultures with 
different length of years should also be possible (think of a scenario on 
another planet, like Mars)

 -Naming days, weeks, years, etc.
This should be trivial to implement, but I wanted to remind you of the 
possibility since most cultures have different names for a year or day. 
Especially the months may vary (again, for an example, see Tolkiens works)
Also, it would be nice to name special days, like Christmas, Easter, etc.

 -Adding non-month days
I don't know if this should be an extra option (it could be implemented using 
extra months), but (again) the Hobbits have some days that do not really 
belong to any month: Yule, Lithe and Overlithe. I can imagine some real 
cultures using these days, too.

 -Stardates
This is the only one that really qualifies the different timesystem you were 
asking for. Stardates are used in Star Trek. There is much to find on the web 
explainig this system. Explaining it here would take too long. Pay attention 
though, there have been used 2 different types of stardates, so don't 
implement one type and don't use the other, having the two different types in 
a scenario would be very great!

 -BC-AD
Now the dates use a (so it seems) hardcoded BC and AD. I suggest making this 
too editable. Most cultures didn't know about Christ, or some will have their 
own major event to add to their years, so adding this seems pointless. Take 
for example the Elves. They have Ages, being the First Age (FA), the Second 
Age (SA), the Third Age (TA) and the Fourth Age (FA).
The Hobbits of the Shire have another reckoning, the Shire Reckoning, using 
year 1 as the year they colonization of the Shire.

 -Customisable texts
As a possible adition to the previous suggestion, it could be nice to consider 
this. Now the year indicator says things like 'Year: 1120 AD', and probably 
in the future will be able to say things like 'Day: March 1120 AD', possibly 
using TA or something like that. I think it would be nice to be able to 
define what is said. So a scenario could have: 'This day is the <day>th day 
of the <month number>th month of the year <year> Anno Domini'. This seems 
far-fetched, but it could be useful.

 -Fully Scriptable
I like to dream of what has to come, so I suggest to make this so that when 
serverside scripting finally works, the calendar can be scriptable as well. 
For example, the Third Age in Tolkien's works ends when the Three Keepers, 
Frodo, Bilbo and some elves set sail to at the Grey Havens. No technology, no 
year (well, the date is given but I don't think it should be 'hardcoded' in a 
possible scenario), only an event is used as the beginning of a new Age. 
Since events could be scriptable, maybe the following pseudocode could be 
used in this case:
if Keepers.Transport = boat and Keepers.location = Grey Havens
 then Calendar.age = "Fourth Age"

A very long list, I hope at least some of this can become implemented. Most of 
these make future scenarios more realistic than Civ2 ever could be, so I 
think they could be very useful.

Bart Coppens