Seeking help on figuring out day/night cycle mathmatics...

[Xul]

Playing on a private server with guildies and I was asked to change our day/night cycle to have it at either 50 mins of day and 10 night, or 55 day and 5 night. The reason for this is my members all go to their homes or camps and sit around during the night, so they would like to RP that their characters are sleeping, which gives them more daylight to work with.

I sat and watched the time tick by with a stopwatch and found the following:

Daylight music starts at 5:15 in game
Noon music is 14 mins 18 secs later
Darkness music is 35 mins in which is 21:45 game time
Full 24 hour cycle back to 5:15 is 50 mins, 30 secs long

The three commands to change all of this are:

DayCycleSpeedScale=1.000000
NightTimeSpeedScale=1.000000
DayTimeSpeedScale=1.000000

I figure if the DayCycleSpeedScale=1.000000 is 50 mins and 30 secs, then changing it to DayCycleSpeedScale=1.170000 should roughly be 60 mins, as .17 is 10 minutes in decimal terms.

I have read elsewhere on the forms that you are supposed to think of the 1.000000 as 100% but am not sure of that myself. I have also read that 0.500000 is 1/2 speed, and 2.000000 is double speed.

Now the issue for me to find out is if the 1.1700000 does indeed make a 24 hour cycle 60 real life minutes, how to manipulate the other two numbers to make the days 50 minutes long and the nights 10 minutes long.

I will post any findings I discover in this top post in hopes of helping others fiddling with time.

And lastly, thank you to anyone who happens to come across this post and gives their advice/feedback.

[Hades]

I'm also trying to figure this out....

According to the Wiki:
http://ark.gamepedia.com/Server_Configuration_Options_and_Console_Commands#Server_Configuration_Options

DayCycleSpeedScale 	float 	1.0 	Specifies the scaling factor for the passage of time in the ARK, controlling how often day changes to night and night changes to day. The default value 1 provides the same cycle speed as the singleplayer experience (and the official public servers). Values lower than 1 slow down the cycle; higher values accelerate it. Base time when value is 1 appears to be 1 minute real time equals approx. 28 minutes game time. Thus, for an approximate 24 hour day/night cycle in game, use .035 for the value.

So basically, you need to DECREASE the value of DayCycleSpeedScale to increase the length of the entire day... i.e. you are decreasing the speed.

So if 1 min realtime = 28 minutes game time...
... then 1440 (24 hours x 60 minutes) game time minutes / 28 = 52 real minutes for a complete day/night cycle which you have observed.

Now back to your requirement.... let's assume that day and night cycle params (1.0) default means basically 50/50 in terms of the daycycle.

So let's slow down the DayCycleSpeedScale by making the value from 1.0 to 0.5... so everything slows down by 50%
Now we have the cycle at 104 minutes... with the day at 52 minutes... and the night at 52 minutes.

So how to increase the speed of night so that rather than taking 52 real life minutes... it only takes 10 minutes? Well the answer is to increase the speed that night goes by a factor of 5 (52/5 = 10.4 real minutes).

So NightTimeSpeedScale needs to go from 1.0 setting to 5.0 setting (5 times faster).

[Hades]

For the sake of completenmess, I want my server to be 40 minutes day time and 10 minutes nighttime.

So default 1.0 setting means cycle is 52 minutes, 28 minutes day, 28 minutes night

• My target is 40 minutes day time...
  
• 1 divided by (40 minutes divided by 28 minutes) = 0.7
  
• Therefore the DayCycleSpeedScale = 0.7

So now we have the game day taking 40 minutes.
Next, we need to speed up the night from 40 minutes to 10 minutes...

• 40 divided by 10 = 4.0
  
• NightTimeSpeedScale = 4.0

If my math is flawed lemme know :)

[Xul]

I appreciate your help on this more than you could know. I will use your math to make the needed adjustments and let you know how it works out.

[Simelia]

DayCycleSpeedScale=1
NightTimeSpeedScale=10
DayTimeSpeedScale=1

this will give u long days and very short nights

if u want a longer night do

NightTimeSpeedScale=5

[oXYnary]

Instead of creating a new thread, thought it would be better to keep the info centralized. Just an FYI, I have found the .35 for the 24hour is about15 minutes fast per day. I lgain about 2 hours in just over a week. Not good if your trying to give your pkayers a consistent feel to when they login. I'm still messing around but .33-.32 might be closer.

[Coratanni]

yea i have been trying to figure it out myself as well. the .035 is is def to fast but i think i will try it between .03-.033 and test

[Coratanni]

.03 is about 15 seconds too fast, gonna cont. fiddling

[Coratanni]

got it =) seems 0.0347 is pretty spot on. love it

[☬ Crow ☬]

we get similiar times as what you are trying to accomplish I think

DayCycleSpeedScale 0.007
Nighttimespeedscale 3.00
daytimespeedscale 0.030

[Tom | Pro Driver]

Check out this website: http://arkforum.de/wiki/index.php/Entry/412-ARK-Tageslaenge-Rechner/


Gesamttageslänge => total length of a day
Tageslänge => length of day
Nachtlänge => length of night

[surviv0r1969]

i must be ♥♥♥♥ at maths lol how would i get 4 hour days and 1 hour nights..... or 2 hour days and 30mins of night. or even 50mins of day time and 10 mins of night, any help would be great especiall if you could tell me the setting for all 3

[Nutcutt3r]

NightTimeSpeedScale=3.00 is abot ten min lol

[Paradox Ritual]

How to find DayCycleSpeedScale:
My goal was to find a daycycle that would make the entire day equal 24h, or 1 game minute to equal 1 real minute.
I first started to find this information by trying different daycycle values and timing how long a game minute lasts in real time. I multiplied the daycycle value with the seconds it took for the minute to change in order to find a constant.

.0333 * 63.6 = 2.11788
.034 * 61.8 = 2.1012
.1 * 19.87 = 1.987
.3 * 7.5 = 2.25
.45 * 4.55 = 2.0475
.5 * 4.25 = 2.125
~2.104763333

So I see the constant is somewhere around 2.1. Knowing the results won't be 100% accurate, it should only be a tiny decimal off.
So solving for daycycle, I divided the constant by 60 seconds.
2.1 / 60 = .035
Testing this in the game with two tests, 1 game minute lasted 59.87s and 59.92s respectively.

I will leave it up to you to determine the math for how many seconds a game minute should last in your server.
[ (target "seconds a game minute lasts") = (goal of "minutes a full day lasts") / (24h * 60m) * (60 seconds)]
or: TS = GM / 24

So the equation to use for daycycle for the entire day length is:
daycycle = 2.1 / TS
or: daycycle = 2.1 * 24 / GM
or: daycycle = 50.4 / (how many minutes you want a game day to last)

note: I've read a game day normally lasts 50.5 minutes, so mayby [daycycle = 50.5 / GM] would be more accurate.

-----

How to find DayTimeSpeedScale & NightTimeSpeedScale:
My goal was to adjust the daytime and nighttime to be closer to real day/nighttime. (Longer nights and shorter days than the current game settings.)
Two important facts:
1) The daytime scale and nighttime scale work INDEPENDENTLY of each other. Meaning that making the days longer will not automatically make the nights shorter, meaning the DayCycleSpeedScale that you found will be inaccurate without manually adjusting both daytime and nighttime scales.
2) If you want the day-to-night ratio to be different than the default setting, then you will have the game minute pass in the daytime either slower or faster than at night. For my example, having 24 game hours last 24 real hours, and making the days shorter than the default, and the nights longer than the default, a day-game minute passes quicker than a night-game minute. Meaning that in the game, time speeds up in the day, and slows down at night.
This means by adjusting these two scales correctly, the whole game day will last as long as expected with your daycycle, but days and nights work faster and slower. So ONLY adjust these two scales if you are sure you want to adjust the day-to-night ration, and you have to adjust BOTH or your DayCycleSpeedScale will be incorrect.

(DayTimeSpeedScale * target.day.hours) + (NightTimeSpeedScale * target.night.hours) = (how many HOURS you want the whole game day to last)
or: (DTS*TDH) + (NTS*TNH) = GDH

Day starts at 05:15 and lasts until 21:48, so that's approximately 16.5 hours.
Night would last 7.5 hours.

For this example, I want the day to last 15 hours and the night to last 9 hours.

DTS = TDH / 16.5 | NTS = TNH / 7.5
(DTS is daytimescale, TDH is "total day length in hours" without nighttime)

So with TDH being 15, my DTS = .90909090909, and with TNH being 9, my NTS = 1.2

However, this is incorrect. This will lead to my day lasting 1:05:25, which is longer instead of shorter, and my night to last 0:49, which is shorter instead of longer. What we really want is as follows:

DTS = 1 + (1 - (TDH / 16.5))
NTS = 1 + (1 - (TNH / 7.5))

This is because larger numbers make the time scale go faster, not last longer. NTS of 1.2 made a night-minute last 49 seconds, but a NTS of 0.8 makes a night-minute lasts 72.2 seconds, which is what I want. Notice this is a 0.2 deviation either way.
My DTS of 1.09090909 makes my day-minute last 55.21 seconds, which is what I want. Again, a deviation of 0.09090909 either way. You just have to go the right direction. So if you instead want longer days and shorter nights than the default, then your DTS will be less than 1, and your NTS will be greater than 1.

Checking my work:
With DTS of 1.09090909, 16.5h * (55 sec / 60 sec) = 15.125h. (Which is probably off that much due to the 50.4 instead of 50.5 as noted above.)
With NTS of .8, 7.5 * (72 sec / 60 sec) = 9 hours exactly.
This adds up to be 24 hours and 7.5 minutes. With the SAME DayCycleSpeedScale that I used before, my time will be off slightly, but very close. (And accounting for human error of using the stopwatch.)

-----

So in conclusion:
DayCycleSpeedScale = 50.4 / (how many REAL MINUTES you want an entire game day to last) [or use 50.5]
DayTimeSpeedScale = 1 + [1 - ((how many GAME HOURS you want the day to last) / 16.5)]
NightTimeSpeedScale = 1 + [1 - ((how many GAME HOURS you want the night to last) / 7.5)]

But adjusting the dayscale and/or nightscale will make time flow differently at day and night. So please measure your day AND night time speed before concluding your daycycle is incorrect.

[knurrT]

@Paradox I love you

[Ghost]

have read elsewhere on the forms that you are supposed to think of the 1.000000 as 100% but am not sure of that myself. I have also read that 0.500000 is 1/2 speed, and 2.000000 is double speed.

This is what i no. I did not use a stopwatch but i set my nighttimespeed to 0.5 and day to 1.5 and now my daylite is almost 3 times longer then night