Okay, that seems a little confusing so let me explain. Planets are spherical and turn on an axis, which allow some day/night cycle. If you travel in a straight line to the left on daytime, the sun will appear to move slower (IRL, if i'm right, a plane heading to the west will take less "measured" time to reach his destination then if it flies to the east). Same kind of idea if you head right. The game could take in consideration the position you are in the world from spawn and offset the time considering that value. Since it takes like 3-4 days to complete the circumference, on foot, it might be something to think about.. Waiting for you comments. thanks
I was thinking this! it would be interesting but I'm curious about how it could be implemented. Still, if it's not too much trouble to add it, I'd love to see it
The only issue I see with this is in Multiplayer with two or more players on different parts of a planet at the same time. It'd be easy to do for single player though.
It could be made to work for multiplayer pretty easily, actually. Rather than having the direction you move impact the day cycle, you could have actual day and night zones that each cover half of a planet's surface and slowly move around the planet. This would also allow for planets with faster or slower rotation and thus different day lengths.
I agree. The day/night cycles should be dynamic and not static. It feels odd that an alien world orbiting around a gas giant in a blue star solar system has a planet with day/night cycle similar to earths In out solar system day/night cycles vary wildly from planet to planet. One interesting facet are celestial bodies that have no orbit. Our moon doesn't orbit, which is why you only see one side of the moon, and some planets in other solar systems also have no orbit. This means on one half of the planet, it's daytime and the other half is night. It'd make planet exploration a lot more interesting in Starbound... Fo sho fo sho
Our moon does orbit; it doesn't rotate relative to the sun. Revolution is one object turning about another (the earth revolves around the sun in one Earth year). Rotation is a body spinning around an internal axis. Tge earth rotates about its axis once per Earth day. In theory, distance from the central star does not affect the length of the day on a planet. There is some corellation but not 1:1.
I like the OPs point. I really was hoping that they'd have a real day/night cycle instead of just it has been X minutes since touch down it will now be night.
I am thinking on how to implement this. Divide the map by 24 parts with the base time we have now is in the place where you spawn. The clock runs normally and keeps track of your position in those 24 parts to update your time. If you walk 3 timezone to the left, it will decrease the time by 3 hours relative to the current time at spawn. This should work even in multiplayer. The game simply tracks which part of the timezone you are currently in and updates your time accordingly.
This would be interesting. Imagine moons of gas giants or other planets having a eclipse when they pass behind their parent body as well as this.
