TomeNET

(4.14) Time systems, speed                                                      
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Three time systems are relevant for the players' game experience:

-real time (you can check the server's time with /stime command by the way, and
 your local time with /ctime aka client time.)

-in-game day time (check in-game time with /time command)
 When NPCs inform you about anything time related, they will do so in in-game
 time, effectively speaking to your character, not to you as a player.
 In-game time passes 20x as fast as real-time (see below for more info).
 This time also controls day/night changes, where the sun rises at 5am and
 night falls at 9pm.
 Note that the four seaons however (and seasonal events with them) do not
 pass that quickly but just at 2x real-time speed (or maybe even exactly at
 real-time speed, depending on server settings).

-in-game 'turns' (the /ex command tells you how fast you can move, ie how much
                 you can move each turn)
 (Not to be confused with server-frame turns, which usually pass at 60 Hz.)
 Turns are small chunks of time during which players and monsters can make a
 move (or several moves if their speed is greater than the basic value of +0
 or less moves if they are especially slow).
 The special thing about turns is that they pass slower for deeper dungeon
 floors, meaning that the speed of all actions is slowed down for both players
 and monsters alike. This is done because both players and monsters will
 usually have gained more speed at higher levels and combat would become too
 fast to react properly.
 You can measure the passing of turns simply by looking at your lamp fuel for
 example, as it is measured in turns (of light) too, passing at 1 energy/turn
 (unless you have fuel-prolonging powers, ie Temporal magic school training).
 So to the player turns would pass at the speed of approximately 0.52s at depth
 zero (0 ft, aka Bree town) and slow down on deeper floors to up to 1.92s per
 turn at dungeon level 196 (-1550 ft, Nether Realm bottom).


Real time:
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Special events for example are usually measured in real-time, ie /evinfo
command will return information that mentions minutes and seconds. This is,
because event information is 'out-of-game' information that is supposed to
inform the player, not the character played.

Scheduling of seasonal events or of event scheduling in general (the frequency
at which events are invoked) are also handled by calculating real time.
The four seasons (and seasonal events) will pass at 2x real time though (or
exactly real time, depending on server settings).

Basically all other things in-game are measured by the passing of 'game turns'
and in in-game time, ie the time of the day as seen by your character, not by
you as a player behind it.


The in-game day time can be checked with /time or with /ex chat commands
and runs at about 20x speed of real time and also features day/night change:
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Usually a whole day (day + night, ie full 24h in-game time cycle) will last for
slightly more than one hour real time.
The sun will usually rise at around 5am, while night falls at around 9pm, so
the in-game night lasts for slightly less than half an hour real time.
An in-game hour lasts for about 160 seconds in real-time.
Extermination orders (see (4.13)) usually have a time limit of two full in-game
days, so you will have about 2.5 h to carry them out.

Wanderers in the wilderness in turn would rather prefer day light in order to
locate the entrance to that dungeon they are looking for.
Vampires burn if they move around in day light without either a protective
wrapping such as a Mummy Wrapping that protects them or an item that provides
resistance to light.
Even store orders and the Merchants Guild mail system work in in-game time and
tell your character how long their deliveries will take, not you as the player,
so when they speak of "hours" or "days", fear not, it'll be much faster in
real time.

The four seasons however are inconsistent with the day/night speed:
A full cycle lasts for half a real-time year, or (depending on server settings)
even a whole real-time year.


More technical stuff about 'game turns' and how time for your character's
actions passes, and actually passes more slowly on deeper dungeon levels:
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Before explaining more about them, I'd like to interject that there is a second
meaning to the term 'turns' in the game, which is used to describe frames of
the game engine, usually running at 60 fps internally. Instead of just calling
those internal processing steps 'frames' as would be precise, unfortunately
they are also called 'turns'. But those 'frame-turns' aren't what we'll be
talking about here, since they don't matter to the players at all.
The only place players will ever come in contact with frame-turns unfortunately
is the high score board, which should probably really be changed to either
'in-game' turns or just to real days/hours/minutes, which make more sense.

So, how do game turns work?
They measure the time experienced by characters and monsters.

For example if you are poisoned then you will see your hit points ticking down.
This is done once each turn, so it will allow you to observe how long a turn
actually lasts in real time.
Same for lamp fuel: It runs out by 1 point of energy each turn.

The speed of characters and monsters also depends on game turns:
A creature (including players) moving at +0 speed can move once per game turn,
while creatures at higher speed may move several times per game turn, and of
lower speed only once in several game turns, depending on the exact speed.

Note that +SPEED is actually not linear in absolute time! To find out how often
your character can really move per game turn, use the /ex command. You will
find that increasing your speed more and more will yield somewhat diminishing
returns on the amount of actions your character can actually perform per turn.

So how long is one game turn actually?

The simplest way to notice is creating a new character and walking around Bree
(not run, but walk), as it will be able to move exactly one grid per turn it
gets. So you'd observe that a turn takes a bit longer than 1/2 and a bit less
than 2/3 seconds, roughly - that is, on the world surface at least! Read on..

An special thing about game turns is that their passing depends on the dungeon
level your character is on!
You can for example observe the passing of turns if you watch your light source
losing fuel and hit CTRL+R to refresh the display and thereby take measure
points.
In the dungeon however, the time will pass slower. The deeper you are, the
slower game turns will pass in real-time. For example if you enter Mordor, you
might feel as if your character only moves at half his usual speed. This is
because each in-game turn is slowed down quite much on dungeon level 34, which
corresponds to the floor at Mordor -50 ft.
The reason for this is that higher level monsters usually move faster than
lower level monsters. This would make the game more and more dangerous to play,
since your reaction times would need to be *very* short. Actually much shorter
than is feasible.
To counter that, the whole time itself is just slowed down on deeper levels, to
allow you to react more easily.

If you enter the town Khazad-dum, you can observe how things would look without
these slow-down mechanics: The town is actually considered level 80 (so
basically as dangerous as a dungeon floor of depth -4000, even though hardly
any high level monsters can spawn there, apart from a few higher level human
type monsters). However, the town is also on the world surface, which means
turn-time is not slowed down there. Now see if you can spot a pack of orcs or
novice warriors that got spawned in Khazad-dum: You'll see that they move at
very high speed! That is because monsters on dungeon levels that are much
deeper than their native level get boosted stats, including their speed.
In the dungeon on -4000 ft you would hardly notice that their speed was raised
because the slower passing of turns counters the visual effect. In Khazad-dum
however you'll see how astonishing fast they suddenly move. You wouldn't want
to have to handle this time speed in the actual dungeon where you encounter
the really bad guys..

For limitations of speed vs real-time regarding server frame rate, see (9.7)
which has information about the game engine limits.