Daylight hours(too long?)

[Max Colby]

Now I know many may disagree for play value, but to play the realism card..

The hours of daylight are a bit too long. This is supposed to be the middle of winter in Northern Canada, right?

I live in Oregon and during the middle of winter it gets light around 8am or so and gets dark around 5pm(which makes for a dreary work week if you're a 8 to 5er).

I figure the hours were made longer for play value, but would be interesting to deal with a more realistic length of daylight.

[elloco999]

You are absolutely right of course, but the geomagnetic thingamajig that happened in the game also changed the amount of daylight we're getting.

[Trandor]

Well maybe you should opt for an option where sunrise and sunset can be manually adjusted. I for one quite enjoy playing in daylight and would not enjoy if daylight was only from 9 to 5, and that at a low altitude so half of the time the sun will be blocked by the surrounding mountains.

Although the game is called "The Long Dark", I suppose we shouldn't take this too literally.

[Bill Tarling]

In the earliest pre-alpha versions, the day/night hours were set closer to normal -- but it meant you spent most of the game playing at night. If I remember correctly, the devs expanded the day slightly and shortened the nights a little to allow for more gameplay [i.e. more daylight time in order to travel or do whatever was needed outside]. Before that adjustment, there just wasn't much daylight to get activities done so you either had to do a lot of your activities in darkness outside, or just spend an agonizing amount of time confined inside the cabins.

In the first versions, "time" also ran slower (as did other activities as they were adjusted relative to the time/speed), but it felt way too slow playing closer to real time to accomplish tasks or travel. Again, the devs made the slightly faster time proceedings in order to allow needed tasks to be performed without having to just sit and wait (which happened a lot in the early versions when relative time was set much slower).

In the deep Northern areas of Canada, it's not unusual to only have 6-7 hours of daylight during cold winter seasons.

The game adjustments may not seem quite as genuine or realistic, but they were definitely needed to progress gameplay (especially given that the story mode map will quite extensively larger than just the first confined sandbox area).

[TarjaS]

Where I live, the shortest day of the year is something like 4 hours 20 minutes. Not much you could get done in that time without artificial light, although people did manage it before electricity. It just wouldn't make fun gameplay.

The way the night is in the game currently, you can't do much, because you just can't see, if you don't have a flare or lantern. Of course, that is not what really cold northern winter nights are like. In reality, if the sky is clear, you can see after a while, once your eyes get used to the dim light of the stars. Moonlight is even better.

It could be interesting, if the game had more realistic vision at night. For example, you should have no problem walking on the lake when the stars are out. Now you just can't see anything, except as a silhouette against the sky.

[elloco999]

I wouldn't mind longer nights, if there were more options for light! Like torches you can make and carry with you and more fuel for the lantern. Also like @Tarjas said, with clear skies you should be able to see to some extend. It should be possible to navigate the open area's in the moonlight/ starlight, but under the trees should be to dark to see.

[Burning Bridges]

the short days in winter are already depressing enough in real life, no need to have that in the game ..

if it was realistic the days could be very short indeed, and that would suck**

number of supporters of unrealistic daylight hours +1!

**I can remember at least 1 game that simulates that (Silent Hunter 4), and some of the campaign months in North-Norway take place in eternal darkness (polar night). I can't tell you how much this sucks!!! I am a daylight lover from Germany. December here is the suckiest month of the year by far, sun rises at 8am, night begins 4pm, darkness is 16h. I usually try to emigrate to Spain / Canary Islands for a few weeks every January because it is simply a terrible time. But we still have 8h daylight/day! Now imagine how bad it must be for the guys in north Norway or Canada who see 0 hours sunlight during polar night!!