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Author Topic: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?  (Read 1794 times)

Betrix5068

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Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« on: November 14, 2018, 01:34:39 pm »

This would retain the lunar synchronicity while increasing the number of days in a year from 336 to 364, which is signifigantly closer to Earth’s 365.242374. Now actually modeling a perfect lunisolar calendar would be asking a bit much, so this error margin of a mere 1.242374 days seems like the ideal, unless ToadyOne actually wants to model a perfect lunisolar calendar, in which case I think he’s a madman but my hat’s off to him for it.
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SixOfSpades

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Re: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2018, 01:40:12 pm »

The planets created in DF are not Earth, and therefore are not obliged to match Earth's solar or lunar cycles in any way.

The only truly odd thing about DF timekeeping is how all the months are 28 "days" long when Fortress mode doesn't have a day/night cycle.
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Telgin

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Re: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2018, 01:46:50 pm »

I'm a little surprised the months aren't 30 days long each, but I guess it's easier to make them 28 days long so they're 4 equal weeks long.

I suspect that randomly generated cultural calendars might be a thing one day, but it's going to be way down the road I'm sure.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2019, 08:25:42 am by Telgin »
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Betrix5068

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Re: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2019, 05:25:54 pm »

The planets created in DF are not Earth, and therefore are not obliged to match Earth's solar or lunar cycles in any way.

The only truly odd thing about DF timekeeping is how all the months are 28 "days" long when Fortress mode doesn't have a day/night cycle.

While the solar year isn't obligated to be the same as that of earth's, the creatures in dwarf fortress still age on an annual basis. An annual basis that mirrors our own world. As such, one would expect for days and years to both roughly mirror that of the real world's Earth. For lunar, the week system already implies that the world's in DF have roughly the same lunar cycle as our own. That's why I recommended adding another month as opposed to adding an additional 2 days to each month, since then the months would no longer be dividable by 7, which is clearly for lunar weeks.
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Timeless Bob

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Re: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2019, 02:33:13 pm »

There's little to say that the DF world's days/nights have any bearing to the length of the Terran day/night cycles.  Indeed, with dwarves eating and sleeping only about four times a year, and an adventurer being able to traverse an entire world in a little under a week, it seems like their day/night cycle would be much slower than ours.  Therefore, the DF year might be considerably longer than ours and the various lifespans also.

Dwarven Time Usage

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Nordlicht

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Re: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2019, 05:00:45 am »

If I remember correctly, at one poiunt the plan is to randomly create the stars/moons of the planet too. So that would give each world it's own calender.
 I think Toady mentioned somewhere that after the myth update, the possibility that the sun is really some god in a fire chariot is also there. Guess this would have an influence too.
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Bumber

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Re: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2019, 12:33:41 pm »

[...] an adventurer being able to traverse an entire world in a little under a week [...]
It's actually a region, not an entire world.
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Timeless Bob

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Re: Add a 13th month to the dwarven calendar?
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2019, 03:17:56 pm »

In my old Bloodlines game, the map was 257x257 and we regularly had adventurers go from one corner to the other in about one in-game week to in-game month.  I remember thinking I'd have to limit the Adventure-mode travel to one in-game day per turn in order to artificially inflate the apparent distance from one Player site to another, just so one Adventurer wouldn't be able to visit all the sites in the entire world in one year and kill off their competition for the dwarven crown.
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