Why is the whole planet night at once?

One of the things I like in this game is how you can travel all the way around a (rather small, because it's a game) planet. But the thing that doesn't make sense is how the entire planet goes into night and day at the same time. Shouldn't dusk and dawn be perpetually going around the planet? It would certainly make sense, and be more interesting.

 

I was going to post a similar thread a while ago, however these planets are fairly small so depending on rotation, night and day would not last very long. It's easier to have an artificial day/night cycle especially for monster spawning. It's doable possibly with a "spawn at surface light level" variable, similar but different from minecraft.

 

They could just rotate really slow, so the night in one spot is as long as the night currently is everywhere. And specific x ranges could be designated as day or night, updated every 30 seconds or so as the night 'moves' across the planet for mob spawning

 

What about night for moons around gas giants?

 

Maybe you are not circling the planet but more running in a circle around an area, think of it, you are not running around a pipe around its exterior ring but, running around it's edge. Maybe that's the reasoning ?!

 

So perhaps it can be such that walking one way (running away from the sun) "accelerates" the passing of a day, and walking the other way (chasing the sun) "decelerates" the day.

 

Respectively:
realistically, moons around gas giants would have the same rotation-based night as other planets. However, if the gas giant blocked out the sun, it would be like an eclipse (but this would occur continuously IRL for about 1/3 to 1/2 of the moon's revolution around the gas giant)
It seems to me that when you loop around a planet you go around the entire thing, since the size of the planet in the starmap makes a difference to the size of the planet while walking
Yes, this would be how it works, effectively. This method would only work for singleplayer, however, so it couldnt be coded that way

 

I think this might be a case of doing what works for the game rather than being realistic, similar to as you said, being able to lap the entire planet in foot.