Day/Night conventions

[a-vince]

Hello,

I'm not sure this is the right forum (maybe should have posted on "Art
Development"?). Anyways, here's the thing:

I've been often finding myself moving the mouse pointer over the "schedule"
images on the upper-right of the screen to double check whether, say, it's
First or Second Watch, or if it's Morning or Afternoon. For a while I
couldn't understand why just a glance to the "schedule" images would not be
enough, until I realized that those images looked somehow "wrong" to me. For
instance: the image "schedule-dawn.png" shows the Sun rising on the right,
while I would have found more "natural" an image showing the Sun rising on the
left.

So, I substituted the relevant images with their mirror versions (1), and that
simple change solved my problem.

I am just wondering if that was just some quirk of my twisted mind, or anybody
else has the same impressions (2).

Just a curiosity...




(1) More specifically: I used the command "mogrify" from the package
ImageMagick:

mogrify -flop schedule-{dawn,dusk,morning,afternoon,firstwatch,secondwatch}.png

in the directory wesnoth/images/misc (on a Linux system).


(2) Actually, I suspect that people living in the South emisphere would
instead find that convention (Sun rising on the right and setting on the
left) perfectly "natural".

[Circon]

Sun rises in the East, sets in the West, compasses show North at the top, West on the left and East on the right.

I think that's it.

[a-vince]

Sun rises in the East, sets in the West, compasses show North
at the top, West on the left and East on the right.

No doubt...


My point was more in the "User Interface" class, since I was referring to
"impressions" given by images which, I suppose, are meant as an "intuitive"
clock.


More precisely: the sequence of images "schedule-morning.png",
"schedule-afternoon.png" gives to me the impression of the Sun high in the
sky, moving from right to left, as viewed from an observer facing the
direction of the peak of the Sun's trajectory in the sky (South, in the
northern hemisphere; North in the southern hemisphere).


But then again, it's just a subjective impression.

So, that's it, I think.

[Cluehunter]

The point of the first poster is that in the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun appears in the south, so the it appears to move from left to right (East to West, facing South).

This has been bugging me about Wesnoth for a while now, but I've just been too lazy to mention it. If you assume that Wesnoth is in the Southern Hemisphere, then no change needs to be made. A few scenarios drop hints that Wesnoth is in the Northern Hemisphere, but don't ask me to give all the references right now.

[Dave]

I personally think that if you remind yourself that "the sun rises in the East and sets in the West" it makes sense.

Also I've never really thought of the sun moving from either left to right or right to left, despite having lived in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres.

I can see how left-to-right can make just as much sense as right-to-left, but that's just it: 'just as much', not 'more' I prefer the right-to-left because the image is basically showing you on which side of the map the sun/moon is on.

I also think that dawn vs dusk is easily enough seen by the blue vs red tinge.

Also it is implied that the game is in the Northern hemisphere, because the North lands are said to be colder. (Not to mention the game being most heavily based on European tradition, and Europe is in the Northern hemisphere).

David

[Invisible Philosopher]

I think I would have found it more natural if the sun and moon went clockwise (i.e left-to-right). But I got used to the way it does move because I had to pay lots of attention to the time of day.

[a-vince]

Well, I've got the feeling this topic has gone a bit astray...

My point was not about Cartography nor about Spherical Astronomy of the real world, and certainly I did not mean to bring up a discussion about the Geography of the world of Wesnoth: as far as I am concerned, Wesnoth could be in a flat world, and its Sun could be a fiery chariot racing through the sky....

I only noticed that a tool of some importance in the game, in my case (and in other's, apparently) is not as effective as it was designed to be.

By the way, I think that that tool can be better classified as a "clock" rather than a "compass".

In fact, the cyclic phases of the game could have been indicated by big, flashing letters declaring "Morning", "Afternoon", and so on. It was instead chosen (rightly so, in my opinion) a more "intuitive" approach, based on images.

It's only that my intuition tends to be somewhat confused by those images, because of some mental processes I won't try to describe again.

So, mine was just a user's feedback on the effectiveness of some game tool, which of course developers may or may not wish to take into account. In any case, it has already pointed out that players can always adapt to small peculiarities of the game interface.

As for me, I applied a workaround (which might be of interest for others too), and so far I'm quite happy with that solution.

That's about all, I guess.

[turin]

i agree it should be more "clocklike".. but...

it is also incorrect geographically, because if you are in the northern hemisphere at non-tropical levels, and are looking north, you can never see the sun. EVER.

[ott]

The dusk and dawn images are (quite rightly) very different. Dawn is light blue and pinkish, dusk is more saturated and orange. Perhaps a way to emphasise this would be to have different colours horizontally. Right now dusk and dawk are the same across the horizon, which is hardly realistic. Around the sun should be lighter, and the moon should be in near darkness. Then dawn could have a preponderance of light, while darkness could dominate dusk.

[scott]

i agree it should be more "clocklike".. but...

it is also incorrect geographically, because if you are in the northern hemisphere at non-tropical levels, and are looking north, you can never see the sun. EVER.

I think this is incorrect. Even at high latitudes the sun rises north of east azimuthally in the summer.

In the drawing, if you are on the northern circle standing on the longitude line that comes closest to us, then the only way for the sunlight to come from due east is for the rays to be coming from an angle below the plane of orbit.

[turin]

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say... my point was that if you are looking due north and are in the northern hemisphere, you won't see the sun. this is true even in summer; in summer, if you are on the tropic of whatever, the sun will be directly above you at the summer solstice. When you are above the tropic, the sun is always slightly to the south. (this gets kind of messed up when you go above the arctic circle, because the sun is in the north at midnight during winter, but i don't think any of wesnoth takes place then).

[edit]
OK, i guess i might get what you're saying.... my examples have to do with noon, though, and where the sun is then...

[scott]

At noon in summer in the northern hemisphere looking north, the sun elevation angle will be less than 90°. At winter it will be >90° (i.e. south of you). Since some campaigns take place in winter the graphic is wrong at least part of the time.

[Darth Fool]

Hmmm... who says wesnoth is on a planet with a tilted axis relative to its orbital plane? Perhaps it doesn't have such a tilt and winter is caused by a highly elliptic orbit. After all, the length of the day/night does not seem to change in winter.

[scott]

good point

[turin]

Hmmm... who says wesnoth is on a planet with a tilted axis relative to its orbital plane? Perhaps it doesn't have such a tilt and winter is caused by a highly elliptic orbit. After all, the length of the day/night does not seem to change in winter.

Who says wesnoth is not on earth? it is not stated anywhere. I prefer to think that it is an ancient, lost age of man, sort of like Tolkien's fantasy - they DO take place on earth, they just take place about 7000 years ago.


just some random stuff. Basically, I think we should go with a planet much like earth, because by changing one thing you don't know what else you are changing - having something like what you describe would also mess with the tides a lot, and would probably mess with the kind of boats necessary, etc etc...