Day and night cycle - feature or speculation?

[Haig]

All right reading the article where the art director talks about the day and night cycle, I really can't make it out does he mean that

1) There is a day-and-night cycle in the game that player can adjust at Options

2) There is only day and night when a wonder has been built, but the engine COULD be used to do such thing.

People have been VERY pumped by it in here, reddit etc. and personally it would be a disappointment for me if there is none.

English isn't my first language so I have trouble understanding the text, here it is, from ign.com:

Yes, Firaxis built a whole time-of-day system just for that one feature. But its uses may not end there. “We’ve been experimenting. We’d also like to do a setting where you literally you see the sun rise when you start the game. But we’ve also had a setting where you can just keep rotating through. It doesn’t make sense to tie it to turns, but a looping two or three-minute cycle. And we also want to give people the option to set certain times, just say ‘6pm!’ and play that way.”

And even though those uses are entirely cosmetic, Busatti says a feature like time-of-day lighting could find other purposes. “There are plenty of ways to tie it in for the modding community. I could see someone making a Gettysburg game where the time of the day actually indicates when the game’s going to be over. So you start your battle at sunrise, and it gets incrementally darker every turn until it’s night time, and that’s the end of the game.”

 

[m15a]

I think that it's closer to (2). I think the key point is that those paragraphs are prefaced by "We’ve been experimenting." There might be options that the player can set when the game comes out, but that hasn't been announced as a feature that will be in the game when it's released.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It reads to me that it was developed for the Wonders movies but they are working on other uses for it, and they plan to do something with it.

 

[Haig]

It's like the reporter, with the simple use of "But it's uses MAY not end here.." makes all the following like a speculation. But if you remove all the reporter's lines then it looks more like it will be there in someway.
Eagle Pursuit gives me hope..

 

[Rusty Edge]

I think it means that they have programmed the feature and it will certainly be in the Wonder Movies.
They are experimenting with other applications now.
Whether these other applications make it into initial release, patches, expansions, or not at all remains to be seen.

Just because it's cool doesn't mean it fits in the hardware specs of the finished version.

 

[m15a]

It's like the reporter, with the simple use of "But it's uses MAY not end here.." makes all the following like a speculation. But if you remove all the reporter's lines then it looks more like it will be there in someway.
Eagle Pursuit gives me hope..

I think the designers want to, which obviously makes it more likely than if they didn't expect that want. But it's still uncertain in the opinion of the interviewed designer. (Or else they are being uncertain because they don't want to make an official announcement.) The quoted text says "We’ve been experimenting. We’d also like to" . . . "And we also want to" . . .

 

[GeoModder]

What would be cool is that part of the map can have 'daylight' while on the other end it would be night. I'm specifically thinking of a 'tilted axis' maptype, where the north is perpetually night and the south perpetually day. Or both poles swing between a long night/long day cycle as on Earth, where it is day or night for a couple months above/below the pole circles.

 

[Ryika]

I think it's somewhat safe to assume that they'll do more with the feature than just use them for the wonder graphics. It would be a really silly move to go into so much detail about something that so many people would want to see and then later be like: "Nah, didn't make it into the game". Assuming a general competence of the people giving those interviews I'd assume they wouldn't bring that issue up if they hadn't already decided that it will in fact be used in the way the players would want it to be used and not just for some flavor outside of the actual gameplay.

 

[UWHabs]

I'd guess that they have the feature essentially done for wonder movies, and they're still playing around to see if it works for the rest of the game. Maybe it will really annoy gameplay and they won't use it, maybe you'll be able to set a single time to use, maybe you'll be able to configure how often your "day" is, or it will mirror your actual day.

Most likely, they haven't gotten far enough along in that to actually figure out what makes sense, hence no commitments there.

 

[ls612]

Almost certainly (2). The coding for the feature has been all done but it has only been hooked up to the wonder cinematic window. That said it would probably be fairly easy for modders to directly implement it in the main game. The main issue would be that the art assets probably weren't designed with this in mind so the nighttime look may not be ideal.

 

[dexters]

It's neither 1 or 2. It's a feature being tested but not yet confirmed or they would have put it in their PR.

The day/night cycle came directly from a quote from Firaxis

“We’ve been experimenting. We’d also like to do a setting where you literally you see the sun rise when you start the game. But we’ve also had a setting where you can just keep rotating through. It doesn’t make sense to tie it to turns, but a looping two or three-minute cycle. And we also want to give people the option to set certain times, just say ‘6pm!’ and play that way.”

He even mentioned specific modes like 3 minute loop, and or setting the time of day and pointed out it doesn't make sense to tie it to turns for the standard game. The paragraph following that also talks about a Civil War scenario where the time of day determines when the game ends. Also quoted from Firaxis.

My guess as it is not a confirmed as a finalized feature, it sounds pretty far along, so they released that information as part of their drip PR move. Some have speculated it was damage control after people didn't like the artstyle but I suspect the interview was already booked before the reactions rolled in as it came far too fast for most PR to react and then arrange an interview like that. But who knows, 2K PR might be really on the ball.

 

[Zaarin]

It sounds to me like the feature will be implemented, but the developers haven't settled on the final form of that implementation.

 

[Westwall]

It's pretty obvious it won't be in the final product.

Possibly in a future expansion (if ever) but not something we'll see by October.

 

[blackcatatonic]

This thread just goes to show how many different ways something can be interpreted.

It's being discussed in fairly vague terms, so I don't think it's guaranteed by any means. It does, however, strike me as odd that it should be mentioned at all when the game is 5 months from release, if they'd already looked at it and decided not to bother taking it any further. They seem pretty set on the Wonder day-night effect and, if that's in, I can't think of a good reason why it wouldn't be extended to an actual day-night cycle in the game itself: clearly they have the tech for it, and they clearly want to do it, so why would they not?

So I could definitely see it appearing in the vanilla product, although perhaps not the full bells-and-whistles version that I think some people might expecting. That said, nothing has been promised yet, so it could easily be cut or delayed before launch.

 

[Josephias]

As said in the interview, it's something they have been experimenting with, as an extra feature on the game looks (it's the art direction interview, so it makes sense to comment on potential paths that are being explored).

I get it they know it works for the wonder movies (which are restricted situations in which they control the camera, are pretty zoomed in, and probably can and will "remove" several map objects).

Using it for standard gameplay may bring extra challenges (does it look well from every angle, in case the user is able to move the camera?, what happens with regards to lighting when several objects overlap (i.e. units and districts)?, also, how much GPU consumes calculating the lighting for every object in a standard gameplay view?.

My guess is these questions are not fully answered, therefore, they are not marketing this as a feature yes. As commented before, whether it gets into the game or not could be a matter of testing results. It's cool to say it in an Art interview (yes, we are fully in the 3D age now, and of course we are considerin to play with lighting in the map), and as they have it already working for wonders, it is safe to comment on it and create a bit of hype, but it would not be wise yet to commit to a broader use that has not been checked.

 

[CyberChrist]

A flowing Dawn-to-Dusk lighting cycle could be used as a visual enhancement to the turn timer for multiplayer.

 

[King William I]

I saw it as in game now, but the option to set a specific time was the experiment. I mean, why talk about the usefulness of something that doesn't exist

 

[Haig]

It doesn't need to be anything mindblowing, I'd be happy with at sunset the light gets this "orange" tone and shadows get longer, night arrives and it's blue-toned and torches being lit/skyscrapers in full light.

Would be so cool to start the very first game as the sun rises and Civ soundtrack kicks in..

 

[dexters]

It doesn't need to be anything mindblowing, I'd be happy with at sunset the light gets this "orange" tone and shadows get longer, night arrives and it's blue-toned and torches being lit/skyscrapers in full light.

Would be so cool to start the very first game as the sun rises and Civ soundtrack kicks in..

Baba Yetu needs to be in the game

 

[primem0ver]

Um... day night cycle? How does that make any sense when each turn represents anywhere from months to centuries? Please... lets not focus on irrelevant eye candy when there are much bigger concerns.