Time in transcendence

[alterecco]

I have been wondering if there is some system for converting ticks to "real time" in game. I seem to recall Periculi needing something similar once, but I can't recall what and where that was discussed.

So, I opened a ticket and raise the question here as well...

I guess the issue is as much one of story. Is there a time in Transcendence (i can only suppose yes) and what is it? Like I said in the ticket, it does not matter if it is "The year of the hen, week of thunder" or "Stardate 234215.1", but it would be nice to have some idea of *when* tick 513251 is. Perhaps we can come up with some system ourselves, and create a couple of functions for converting back and forth between it and ticks, but I guess it would be nice to have built into the engine.

Perhaps it is simple, and we can just say 30000 (or something) ticks is a Transcendence day? And the game starts on a Tuesday in year 2300, a cold February morning?

Hoping someone has some good suggestions for this (or my next mod will contain dates in unreadable ticks :)

[Ttech]

It depends how long it takes to get to Heretic, lets say 30000 ticks was from SK to Juno it would only take a day? I'm not sure how the unit would work however if its anything like snmp ticks I can give you a converter and we can see how it works out

[george moromisato]

The current timescale is 1 tick = 2 seconds game time.

In a future version I will keep a separate game clock which may advance (and retreat?) independently of the tick count.

For example, when traveling through a gate, more time might elapse than indicated on the tick count.

I will add functions to convert from ticks to game time and vice versa.

If you write some functions today that do that conversion and don't make assumptions about the relationship between ticks and game time, then you should be able to migrate naturally once the built-in functions show up.

A few notes about the canonical universe:

1. In Human Space, dates are still measured by Earth standards: days, months, years.

2. At the start of the game in the Domina & Oracus campaign it is the year 2419.

3. Galactic dates (i.e., the calendar used by the Ancient Races) is obviously different. They measure "dates" using four values:

An 'orbis' is roughly one galactic revolution or ~211.65 million years.
An 'orbis' is divided into 30 'trisem'
A 'trisem' is divided into 200 'arc'
An 'arc' is divided into 780 'generi'

One 'generi' is roughly 45 years.

Any date in galactic history can be expressed with those four number (to a 45 year resolution):

The current Galactic date is:

21.2.198.473

I haven't quite worked out time-scales below 45 year granularity.

[alterecco]

Thank you George, this information is much appreciated

/off to tinker with some date functions/

[Ttech]

The current timescale is 1 tick = 2 seconds game time.
In a future version I will keep a separate game clock which may advance (and retreat?) independently of the tick count.

For example, when traveling through a gate, more time might elapse than indicated on the tick count.

I will add functions to convert from ticks to game time and vice versa.

If you write some functions today that do that conversion and don't make assumptions about the relationship between ticks and game time, then you should be able to migrate naturally once the built-in functions show up.

A few notes about the canonical universe:

1. In Human Space, dates are still measured by Earth standards: days, months, years.

2. At the start of the game in the Domina & Oracus campaign it is the year 2419.

3. Galactic dates (i.e., the calendar used by the Ancient Races) is obviously different. They measure "dates" using four values:

An 'orbis' is roughly one galactic revolution or ~211.65 million years.
An 'orbis' is divided into 30 'trisem'
A 'trisem' is divided into 200 'arc'
An 'arc' is divided into 780 'generi'

One 'generi' is roughly 45 years.

Any date in galactic history can be expressed with those four number (to a 45 year resolution):

The current Galactic date is:

21.2.198.473

I haven't quite worked out time-scales below 45 year granularity.

So roughly the date is 2419 at game start, however if humans are mingling with the Ancient Races does human date begin to include the ~4.4 billion years from the Galactic Date?

[bimbel]

[...]One 'generi' is roughly 45 years.[...]

My last playthrough lasted roughly 17 hours. with the 1sec(realtime) = 60sec(ingame) I calculate my path through the system to be 42.5 days (with instant gatetravel).

In the ancient calendar that would mean it took me 0.002588 generi for visiting 27 systems and leaving Heretic.

[Atarlost]

The current timescale is 1 tick = 2 seconds game time.

In a future version I will keep a separate game clock which may advance (and retreat?) independently of the tick count.

For example, when traveling through a gate, more time might elapse than indicated on the tick count.

I will add functions to convert from ticks to game time and vice versa.

If you write some functions today that do that conversion and don't make assumptions about the relationship between ticks and game time, then you should be able to migrate naturally once the built-in functions show up.

A few notes about the canonical universe:

1. In Human Space, dates are still measured by Earth standards: days, months, years.

2. At the start of the game in the Domina & Oracus campaign it is the year 2419.

3. Galactic dates (i.e., the calendar used by the Ancient Races) is obviously different. They measure "dates" using four values:

An 'orbis' is roughly one galactic revolution or ~211.65 million years.
An 'orbis' is divided into 30 'trisem'
A 'trisem' is divided into 200 'arc'
An 'arc' is divided into 780 'generi'

One 'generi' is roughly 45 years.

Any date in galactic history can be expressed with those four number (to a 45 year resolution):

The current Galactic date is:

21.2.198.473

I haven't quite worked out time-scales below 45 year granularity.

There should be a unit analogous to the Terran year. Planets in the habitable zone of a main sequence star will always have a year within a relatively narrow range, and I think Earth's near the middle of the habitable zone and would therefore be near to the mean year of a habitable planet.

Also, the edges of the allegedly habitable zone may be unable to develop indigenous life and require terraforming. Stars larger than Sol are unlikely to develop advanced civilizations because of their comparatively brief lifespans. Stars smaller may, so the "standard" year may be somewhat shorter than a Terran year. The standard year will probably be some convenient fraction of an arc, but I'm not sure your galactic timekeeping isn't too humanocentric. Base 10 really isn't all that reasonable. I'd suggest base 2, 12, or 60. 2 is the smallest usable base, 12 has the most factors with a small symbol set, and 60 has lots of factors. 30 is okay, but only has a single power of 2. 200 has no reason to appear in any sensible base. I'm not sure 780 does either.

[george moromisato]

There should be a unit analogous to the Terran year. Planets in the habitable zone of a main sequence star will always have a year within a relatively narrow range, and I think Earth's near the middle of the habitable zone and would therefore be near to the mean year of a habitable planet.

I like that idea.

...but I'm not sure your galactic timekeeping isn't too humanocentric. Base 10 really isn't all that reasonable. I'd suggest base 2, 12, or 60. 2 is the smallest usable base, 12 has the most factors with a small symbol set, and 60 has lots of factors. 30 is okay, but only has a single power of 2. 200 has no reason to appear in any sensible base. I'm not sure 780 does either.

I think that's very logical, but it optimizes for ease of computation, which was important when we (humans) were developing our calendar. [Even then we were forced to deal with hard numbers like 365.25...]

It's not clear to me that ease of computation has to be a primary factor for a galactic civilization that's been around for hundreds of millions of years.

Even then, I think of this system is something that galactic scholars/scientists created to write their histories, not something that beings would use day-to-day. It is likely that this system evolved much later than whatever local systems were used.

My thinking was that the largest scale was tied to a galactic rotation (on average) which is the closest thing to a natural period at that scale.

The smallest scale (the 'generi') was tied to the average length of a generation (i.e., the rough time between birth and having a child for this particular alien race).

The next scale up (the 'arc') was roughly tied to the average life-expectancy of a civilization (at least at that time).

[To be clear: almost any speculation on such a civilization is completely unfounded in facts. I think we're both just aiming for willing suspension of disbelief.]

One last thing: Below the 'generi' we are crossing into time scales that people would use every day. Maybe that needs to be a reasonable base (e.g., 60).

How about 60 'years' per generi? We will need to come up with a name for that time unit.

OK, really one last thing: I'm roughly assuming that there is a standard galactic language. A simplified version of which has been (somewhat) translated by humans who were trapped on the other side of the Heretic quarantine zone.

[Atarlost]

Galactic standard does not need, and unless the races of the galaxy have unusually uniform physiology can't have, a spoken form. It may not even have a written form, being solely used by computers. It should be designed for ease of machine translation and minimum information loss. If exploration is ongoing it should have a protocol for extensibility to handle new terminology since biological terms will otherwise give problems. (There can not possibly have been a term for eg. strawberry in the galactic standard language prior to contact with a species from the biosphere to which strawberries are native)

[bimbel]

As noone on the IRC was sure if it was requested already I do it here:
I'ld like to have a Total time played' Stat for the [F2] statistics. I guess it could also be in ingame time so you have the right frame!

[Vachtra]

A galactic standard would very likely be both spoken and written. It would also most likely be created to work with all of the major species that came together in the first place to set these standards. The use of computers is probably only used by some of the less advances races that haven't mastered the galactic standard. Mulitlingual groups are very common on earth today. Extending this to the galaxy is a no-brainer.
Most of your translation errors are in computer translations today or people who still don't understand the language they are trying to speak.
Just look at a government conference between nations. There are people translating what is being said into many languages, not computers.
As far as new terms are concerned there will probably be some generic naming standard, possibly something akin to latin which will merely describe the item. The name however will probably not change. If a particular race has a hard time saying it then they will probably use the descriptive name.

Just curious about the whole cross species computer translating. What makes you think that species who have never seen each other, with different language and physiology would have computers that would be compatible? We can't even get Mac's and PC's to talk half the time. Also if the language is not written or verbal how could you make sure the message received was correct? Relying on a computer is the last thing you want to do.

Galactic standard does not need, and unless the races of the galaxy have unusually uniform physiology can't have, a spoken form. It may not even have a written form, being solely used by computers. It should be designed for ease of machine translation and minimum information loss. If exploration is ongoing it should have a protocol for extensibility to handle new terminology since biological terms will otherwise give problems. (There can not possibly have been a term for eg. strawberry in the galactic standard language prior to contact with a species from the biosphere to which strawberries are native)

[Atarlost]

A galactic standard would very likely be both spoken and written. It would also most likely be created to work with all of the major species that came together in the first place to set these standards. The use of computers is probably only used by some of the less advances races that haven't mastered the galactic standard. Mulitlingual groups are very common on earth today. Extending this to the galaxy is a no-brainer.
Most of your translation errors are in computer translations today or people who still don't understand the language they are trying to speak.
Just look at a government conference between nations. There are people translating what is being said into many languages, not computers.
As far as new terms are concerned there will probably be some generic naming standard, possibly something akin to latin which will merely describe the item. The name however will probably not change. If a particular race has a hard time saying it then they will probably use the descriptive name.

Just curious about the whole cross species computer translating. What makes you think that species who have never seen each other, with different language and physiology would have computers that would be compatible? We can't even get Mac's and PC's to talk half the time. Also if the language is not written or verbal how could you make sure the message received was correct? Relying on a computer is the last thing you want to do.

Macs not talking to PCs is a thing of the past. Even divergent architectures converge over time because connectivity is too valuable to not have, and you can design a gateway between widely differing networks. Over time the lesser architecture will go the way of Netware and Appletalk and everyone will adopt the network protocol of the dominant interstellar race.

No, relying on a person is the last thing you want to do. If someone lends you a translator you can't trust him at all, but if they give you a computer you can have your computer scientists study it until they can be entirely confidant that it is not spying on you.

The advantage of a purely synthetic language for trade and diplomacy is that it can be made grammatically uniform enough and semantically unambiguous enough that it doesn't require AI to translate it. This is especially vital for diplomacy where an anarchist can cause a major war by being in the translators booth as easily as by shooting an archduke. For trade it is important because translators require wages, but software just has an up front cost, which may be nominal or zero because the development costs have to be born by governments because they need the same software to conduct diplomacy.

We use human translators not because they're better than AIs, but because we don't have AIs. A translator that would stubbornly spit out error messages instead of silently assuming things are proper nouns unless explicitly tagged as such would be vastly superior to the current system for dealings between persons sophisticated enough to know how to use computers.

[Vachtra]

Macs not talking to PCs is a thing of the past. Even divergent architectures converge over time because connectivity is too valuable to not have, and you can design a gateway between widely differing networks. Over time the lesser architecture will go the way of Netware and Appletalk and everyone will adopt the network protocol of the dominant interstellar race.

The very fact that there is still a distinction between Macs and PCs tells us that there still isn't a reliable connection between the two systems to transmit any and all data. They're different and issues arise all the time. Otherwise we wouldn't distinguish between them.

No, relying on a person is the last thing you want to do. If someone lends you a translator you can't trust him at all, but if they give you a computer you can have your computer scientists study it until they can be entirely confidant that it is not spying on you.

You assume that the translator is lent to you. The same goes for a computer you don't understand. Look all you want and you can't gurantee that it's not bugged. Only that it's not how you would do it.

The advantage of a purely synthetic language for trade and diplomacy is that it can be made grammatically uniform enough and semantically unambiguous enough that it doesn't require AI to translate it. This is especially vital for diplomacy where an anarchist can cause a major war by being in the translators booth as easily as by shooting an archduke. For trade it is important because translators require wages, but software just has an up front cost, which may be nominal or zero because the development costs have to be born by governments because they need the same software to conduct diplomacy.

Again the fact that nations on this planet see things too differently for this to work makes this unambiguous notion moot. For instance the native americans couldn't comprehend what happened when the land they were living on was taken away. They didn't have the concept of owning land. Not too long ago a corporation tried to claim ownership of water vapor in the air making it illegal to collect condensation and succeeded for a while util the residents revolted and threw them out of the country.
Language changes too quickly for programs to keep up. Even English morphs a little every year, both connotation and denotation. Sure Latin doesn't change, but it really isn't used either. Not the way you suggest.

Factors of language use:
Familiarity, Tradition, Pride, Necessity, Pressure
People don't use a language just because someone says it might make things easier. Many elderly Vietnamise know French fluently but many also refuse to use it.

persons sophisticated enough to know how to use computers.

Aren't we using computers?