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[Mr Crabman]

Adding a proper day/night cycle to fort mode doesn't seem too likely anytime soon because of how fast it would be (literally like 6 seconds at 100 fps) and would have weird implications for behavior. But some seasons (in some places in the world anyway), are dark more of the time than they are light, so for these situations, it would make sense that the fort mode "abstraction" has an aesthetic that is always nighttime (instead of always daytime).

This could also apply if in myth&magic, a location that is permanently or predominantly nighttime (for magic reasons) is embarked on.

[callisto8413]

That kind of makes sense if you live in polar regions.  And some creatures,  dangerous  or otherwise,  would be more active at night. 

[Mobbstar]

What effects would this have?  I believe darkness itself (as in, the tile attribute) only affects vision in Adventurer mode, and affects cave adaption.

[Mr Crabman]

I imagine mostly just visual/aesthetic pretty much (applying a "nighttime" filter and affecting visibility), and affecting cave adaptation.

The only other thing that would seem appropriate maybe is having certain literal night creatures appear that don't show up in adventure mode daytime or indeed fortress mode at all (like bogeymen).

[Starver]

Given the context, it would mean creatures tagged as hibernating stop arriving (or do so less often, for those that do 'hibernation' merely by increased/linked times of torpor, but occasionally emerge for whatever reason) and then those that are biologically tied instead to an aestivation-cycle start/increase their appearances.

In a region permanently under a Sphere Of Night/Shadow/Whatever then nocturnalism would be a highly dominant quality amongst the creatures that procedurally appear. They'd technically have their own 'daily'/otherwise torpor needs, but given that the game's baseline Dorfish sleep cycles in a fort embark are much divorced from the official daily cycle behind rhe gameplay calendar, one just assumes 'matters are arranged' in creatures adapted to this environmenr, having started off advantageously adapted to move into such a benighted biome.

Twilight-only areas might be awash with those with crepuscular tendencies, though that's often an adaptation to avoid the specific dangers of night and day, whilst still taking advantage of the benefits of not-day and/or not-night, so rather than just a mix of vespertine and matutinous 'evaders', I'd expect a larger number of specialist half-light hunters (to make up for those that cannot operate late/early shifts beyond their usual day or night cycles) in any properly filled econiche.


Though, as a fantasy setting, it could just be 'made so'. The region may have a Night Adder/Sun Bat/Dusk Buffalo assumed to be suited to the permanent (or seasonal) oddity of non-standard day/night cycle. In-game, this would mean little. Adding a modifying descriptor to a suitable (opposite-typed) current Raws-entry (much like the suggested Giant <Foo> creatures entity fork, or <Foo> Man sentients) and perhaps a procedurally-chosen quality (innate infravision to anything newly Night-adapted, maybe a replacement stealth of some kind to those ancesterally using the cover of night but now living an enforced Day-shift). And ideally a weakness for the 'wrong' conditions (to justify them {hibern|aestiv}ating, or casually walking out of their adapted/adopted Sphere/Biome territory where the lighting conditions are now (potentially) adverse, or at least cyclically 'annoying'.


Just some thoughts. I have more, but I think I've said far more than I intended already.

[voliol]

It would be more natural to let winters be dark without simulating a "night". Winters are just dark by default if you live by the poles, just as summers are light. Or at least so is the case in our spherical world, but it could as well be in Dwarf Fortress if we imagine it as a bent foil instead of a flat rectangle. In any case conflicting the day-night cycle from the seasonal one would not only be conceptually strange, it would mess with nocturnal summer creatures and diurnal winter creatures; you'd get winter-hibernating bats in the winter. This, granted they wouldn't get locked out of appearing, could be an acceptable fantasy abstraction if DF was a game where night always equaled winter, but it isn't; Adventurer mode has full nights and winters as separate concepts.

And then Night sphere places should be dark/have only nocturnal creatures regardless of the season (but only winter creatures in winter).

[Starver]

Yep, if it is awkward to 'paint the map' (perhaps an astrolabe/spinny-clock-with-sun-and-moon[1]-ornament side-graphic could do all the work) then just vary the other clues. Not just the freeze/thaw cycle, that is, plus the mega-fauna changes where compatible; along with the caravan/etc cycles, also have the typical visitations of fauna give the clues. (Because days whiz by, compared to movement of creatures, nocturnal/diurnal tendencies are going to be awkward, except by representing longer night-times/day-times with a shift in distributions of numbers, where seasonality isn't the main (dis}qualifier.)

And some of that will be dependant upon seasonal migrations. Depending upon the 'latitude' (even hemisphere, or equivalent), you may get any given creature as a winter or a summer visitor only (or Months 11-3 / Months 5-9, whichever range matches your spring+summer - if the worldgen now allows for this). Or if 'all myths are made true' (potentially) in this procgenned fantasy world, just allow/create some of the more fantastic life-cycles where seasonality is represented (perhaps mostly hidden, until/unless capture and even trainability makes it an in-fort occurance) as an annual-cycle were-like (one-way?) transformation.

Sorry, again. Getting far from the OP suggestion. (The astrolabe HUD-decoration/whatever seems an easier indicator, especially while overseer-infravision is assumed so long as there are overseen-eyes have already seen any not automatically revealed spot.)

I could actually see Steam-era graphics doing it, and I suppose I was already convinced that they could do the ground-slope shading/tinting in continually changing manner to represent the changing light-source angle as each day (and night, assuming a fiction of an opposing-moon casting its colder silvery light in exact counterpart) if it wouldn't induce epileptic reactions by its free-running frequency.

Seasonally, perhaps this could be reduced (assuming the terrain graphics could be made sensitive to and representative of an illumination-angle, which they probably can't if they're the fixed assets I actually assume they are) to merely 'wobble' to represent the date-appropriate mid-morning solar position (as if casting longer, lower, redder shadows in the depths of the year; shorter, higher, yellower illumination at the heights of summer).

Though this would surely produce calls for more realistic 'tropic' behaviour (light more from NE rather than SE, say, for half the otherwise two-seasonal (dry and monsoon periods, if lucky/unlucky) yearly cycle).

And anywhere deemed as underground really should not get any graphical sop to whatever it is the game interface thinks the Sun might be doing aboveground, either by daily or annual measure. Except maybe for very transient occurances, once or twice a year.



[1] Phased, even if we're going for the fiction (at least in our world) that the Moon only ever rises as the sun sets, and sets whenever the sun is rising again. I've known adults who refuse to acknowledge that the Death Star Moon is visible right now in that day's sky, and adamantly won't look up to clearly see it.

[Azerty]

Maybe averaging.

For exemple, if a day is stated to last 24 hours and if, in a given season, daytime lasts 16 hours then the amount of daylight is 16/24=2/3, and the lightning should be 2/3, and effects shuld be proportional to this figure.