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I've been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf and really enjoying the experience of it paralleling the real world. I started to wonder what a Harvest Moon game that did this would be like (although, like Animal Crossing, it would have to take liberties with reality).

I also tried to think of other games that use 24-hour clocks.

World of Warcraft has a 24-hour day/night cycle, but it doesn't seem to affect anything.

The modern Pokemon games use a similar cycle to Animal Crossing (24-hour and tied to the player's real-life clock) which affects some stuff (and is kind of neat).

And that was it. I couldn't think of any more, not old games, not current games.

So, let's have it. Surely there are more games, maybe old PC games I missed or something I'm just not thinking of.

What games can you think of, particularly classics, that have used an actual, 24-hour clock? Are there any modern ones besides what I could think of? Surely there must be modern and classic games I'm missing.

Interested in your responses! :)
Post edited June 12, 2013 by Jesse_Dylan
Gothic.
Settlers 4 kind of, you can turn it off.
Elder Scrolls, all of them.
Post edited June 12, 2013 by tinyE
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tinyE: Gothic.
Settlers 4 kind of, you can turn it off.
But are they equivalent to our own 24-hour clocks in real-life? In other words, it's nearly 5pm for me here, so if I turned on Gothic, would it also be 5pm?

(If so, that's kind of neat!)

I assume stuff doesn't actually happen in Gothic while you're not playing, though?

Elder Scrolls games have a day/night cycle, yes, but it doesn't run on 24-hours. Sorry, I was probably unclear. I don't know what the timescale in Elder Scrolls games is, but I think an entire 24-hour day happens in a couple real-time hours.
Post edited June 12, 2013 by Jesse_Dylan
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tinyE: Gothic.
Settlers 4 kind of, you can turn it off.
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Jesse_Dylan: But are they equivalent to our own 24-hour clocks in real-life? In other words, it's nearly 5pm for me here, so if I turned on Gothic, would it also be 5pm?

(If so, that's kind of neat!)

I assume stuff doesn't actually happen in Gothic while you're not playing, though?
OH! I misread that! Sorry.
Some games do have a calendar hook up and do certain things on certain days. Santa Clause shows up on December 25th in the hanger when you play X-Wing.

I would think any on line community game would.
I'm pretty sure Arma 3 has a 24-hour day/night cycle on missions and servers that are continuous and always ongoing. I would imagine this extends to Arma 1 and 2 as well, but I don't know exactly since I have never played such a mission in them. From my understanding, in Arma 3 the time ingame is tied to the time of the server's location. Obviously this is a multiplayer feature, though so I'm not sure if it's what you're speaking of exactly.
Firefall has a day and night cycle. I wish it would use a realtime day and night 24 hour cycle though. It goes from day to night in a few hours. But I guess it's shortened because of the cataclysm that opens the game.

I know that the unfinished Interstellar Marines game is looking to implement a 24 hour time cycle. You can see it in their video demos.
Post edited June 12, 2013 by u2jedi
Pretty much all of the Shin Megami Tensei games.
One distinction I want to make: I was specifically curious about games that run on actual 24-hour cycles and mirror the console/PC clock. So, if it's 5pm in the real-world, it's 5pm there. Maybe I should have said "persistent clock" or something!



My topic subject stinks! I couldn't figure out how to convey what I was looking for correctly.
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Jesse_Dylan: I've been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf and really enjoying the experience of it paralleling the real world. I started to wonder what a Harvest Moon game that did this would be like (although, like Animal Crossing, it would have to take liberties with reality).

I also tried to think of other games that use 24-hour clocks.

World of Warcraft has a 24-hour day/night cycle, but it doesn't seem to affect anything.

The modern Pokemon games use a similar cycle to Animal Crossing (24-hour and tied to the player's real-life clock) which affects some stuff (and is kind of neat).

And that was it. I couldn't think of any more, not old games, not current games.

So, let's have it. Surely there are more games, maybe old PC games I missed or something I'm just not thinking of.

What games can you think of, particularly classics, that have used an actual, 24-hour clock? Are there any modern ones besides what I could think of? Surely there must be modern and classic games I'm missing.

Interested in your responses! :)
You will rarely find it, as a gameplay mechanism it is not wise to force people to play at certain times, which is why in most cases where time of day is important it is either short cycles or can be controlled by the player.

However, I might just mention a GBA game by Kojima - [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Hand]Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand[/url]
Operation Flashpoint and ARMA.
Thief II has a mission where real-time clocking (not synchronized with the PC's!) can play a role.

In some games, some easter eggs may be activated depending on your system's date.
Probably not the kind of games your interested in but:

Microsoft Flightsimulator, I think from v3 and onward, actually most flightsims use a realtime clock.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R., must mod the game to have it use realtime clock instead of accellerated but it isn't hard.
Dark Reign 2 has a day/night cycle, rather unique feature for an RTS.
Testdrive Le Mans, Le Mans 24 Hours.
X-Com, although I think even on the slowest setting time passes faster.
Post edited June 12, 2013 by Strijkbout
Farming Simulator, if you choose to set it that way.
I'm pretty sure a lot of games with the day/night cycle can be modded to run un real time. Maybe not even modding, some tweaks to the ini file might be enough.
Post edited June 13, 2013 by DaCostaBR
'A stitch in time' had a nice day\night cycle.
Every Pokemon game from Gold/Silver onward has a full-on Day/Night cycle, complete with 1:1 time ratios (1 minute in-game is 1 minute real-time, the clock keeps going even if you aren't playing) and actual days of the week. So, let's say you start a game Sunday at noon (and say so in-game when you set the time), but don't play it until Tuesday at 9pm. It will be Tuesday at 9pm when you pick up the game again.

Honestly, there isn't a ton of stuff that changes from night to day or even from day to day, but there are certain pokemon that only appear during particular times and even fewer on particular days. There might be some other gameplay effects that happen, but it's been too long and I can't remember them.