Is it possible to have a real time clock in the game?

[Saran]

I would like to implement a real time clock that runs with the game. When you exit the game, the clock would still be running and when you'd return to the game, some events would change according to the real time. Is it possible to make it run for example with the Windows or Android clock?

[Wasabito]

I don't think you can do that, but I'm sure there is a way where you can read the current time (system time and day) and then use that as event trigger or something. However, I've been playing little time on cf2.5 to give instructions on how to do that.

[76561198130597814]

I do think it's possible, and imo it would make a great game idea!
As Wasabito said, you can use system's time by Date and Time object and from there, you can use the data to make it trigger an event on specific time (say, from Day to Night or vice versa).

[Saran]

Thank you, I'll try it.

[francois]

Answering to this thread late.

Two solutions :

- Leave your application running in the background, no display, it wont take much processor time. On Windows, there is an object to add a small icon to the right of the task bar (cant remember the name). And Android, uncheck "End application when not in foreground", but I'm not sure is the application loop will be called. I have to ask Fernando about that. Then update the objects on your game based on the timer.

OR (and AND, as the user may want to force your application to quit)

- When quitting your application, save the value of the timer somewhere where you can recover it the next time. On next boot, load the previous value, calculate the difference, then make a loop, with no display, that calculates quickly what has happend in the delay between the two launches.

[Saran]

Thank you very much, I'll see what I can do, but this looks like it might work.

[DannyUK2k14]

Maybe not the easiest, but the best and most efficient way to do this is; serverside. Games like FarmVille etc. that use this technique are all serverside coded, this way you just retrieve information from the server (which runs 24/7) and relates to the user(s) account. You can then amend the necessary changes inside the client (your app).

You can achieve stuff like this with the GET object and some PHP/SQL knowledge...

[francois]

We need to make a Clickteam Fusion 2.5 PHP exporter : make games-architecture in PHP on your server using events!

[Wasabito]

Snail is right about it is less-secure, but, based on some old games made with this kind of in-game/real time, the "exploit" process made the games attractive to some gamers, and had "free" marketing (cheats posted on the web), so you get more exposure. Explore possibilities and see what you need. Regards.

[Wasabito]

Continued... it also opens the possibility to some easter eggs in game (for example, if the user had a specific date/time mix, a special event could trigger, or a new character could show up).