American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)
http://www.wargame.ch/board/acwgc/

What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?
http://www.wargame.ch/board/acwgc/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20089
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Author:  Joe Meyer [ Sat Feb 14, 2015 6:42 pm ]
Post subject:  What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

How about incorporating a more gradual visual range in both dawn and dusk turns for the HPS/JTS Campaign Civil War programs? For instance, the following:

For 30-minute game turns -

1st half of Dusk turn: 40 hex visibilty.
2nd half of Dusk turn: 4 hex visibility.

1st half of Dawn turn: 4 hex visibility.
2nd half of Dawn turn: 40 hex visibility.

For 20-minute games turns -

1st third of Dusk turn: 50 hex visibility.
2nd third of Dusk turn: 30 hex visibility.
Last third of Dusk turn: 4 hex visibility.

1st third of Dawn turn: 4 hex visibility.
2nd third of Dawn turn: 30 hex visibility.
Last third of dawn turn: 50 hex visibility.

Would that be a doable and easy thing to program into the game engine code?

Author:  John Ferry [ Sat Feb 14, 2015 6:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

Dusk and dawn turns are hard-wired into the pdt by the designer (anybody can modify a pdt) and there is not much one can do with the one-hour transition. You can, however, modify the hour or so leading up to dusk or after the dawn. Good examples of that are in the weather section of pdts covering the May 12th assault on the Mule Shoe.
John Ferry
Overland co-designer

Author:  KWhitehead [ Sun Feb 15, 2015 9:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

You can also use the weather entries in the pdt to create the effect by setting different LOS for each 20 or 30 minute interval. Has the advantage of not requiring any game changes but does require putting in a set of entries for each day in the games scenarios.

Author:  Christian Hecht [ Sun Feb 15, 2015 4:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

PDT sets "Hours of Twilight: 1" in this case one, and "Twilight Visibility: 4 hexes" in this case just 4 hexes of visibility in this hour.
Now could I simply change the "Hours of Twilight" to zero?
I'm just not sure if the zero value works.

If it works this way you also have to adjust the Dusk hour by adding the number of "Hours of Twilight" to it, so that night starts were it should have originally started with the "Hours of Twilight" setting.

Author:  S Trauth [ Thu Feb 19, 2015 5:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

You would probably have to change it to 1 -since you will want to see into the adjacent hex. I think using a 0 indicates don't see anything ever.

Edit: oops -number of turns for twilight. I think using a 0 may work in that sense, I think I even accidentally tried it once while editing in the M&P engine. Basically at this point you are talking about compacting a dusk turn into 3x the amount of time represented. The other way would be just set night earlier and then adjust the amount of Dusk visibility on the turn/turns that you are using as Dusk to daylight.

Author:  simovitch [ Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:37 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

In the weather scenarios I did for Old Banshee, daylight is increased gradually from 1 hex (night) then 2, then 3 and finally 4 hexes and continues gradually through sunrise and morning mists until full 70 hex visibility around 9-10 AM. Afternoon to evening is the opposite. hazy afternoons lead to gradual dusk 4, 3, 2 hexes and then night. If the weather was historically misty or rainy, then the daytime visibility pattern is much worse.

I just finished the mod for Campaign Peninsula, you can try them out here: http://old-banshee.com/weather-downloads.php

Author:  Joe Meyer [ Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

It appears from the responses I've read that it is indeed possible to create a more realistic, gradual dusk and dawn range of sight, something that I'm sure most of us would prefer. How difficult, then, would it be for this club to adopt a standard PDT modification for it that would be applicable across all of the games in place of the one that is there now. I understand that there are those fabulous specialty constructions, such as the weather scenarios that Rich has produced, and time differentials in others. But most of us are not so talented as to competently venture into the world of PDT changes, nor would those diverse individual efforts result in an acceptable, standard result!

Could not someone work up a simple downloadable mod of the PDT based upon a criteria agreed upon by membership consensus that would broadly satisfy the issue? Or have I misunderstood what can be done and not done? Is this something that only JTS/HPS could modify, or allow within the confines of existing copyright? Perhaps Rich Hamilton could weigh in on this.

Author:  Christian Hecht [ Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

Personally I try to play only those scenario that incorporate weather and so would prefer if such endeavor is incorporated into these mods.
That alone would be hard enough but I guess worth it.
Doing it for all the none-weather PDTs would surely lead to a more realistic dawn/dusk I'm not sure if it's really worth the work.

Author:  Robert Frost [ Mon Mar 09, 2015 3:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

What is being discussed can only be done by using the Weather option. I tried modifying the maximum visibility of day turns by "extending" dawn turns to cover the entire period until dusk. This produced problems in the game engine. John Ferry is correct that dawn and dusk are hard-wired. It would certainly be feasible to create PDT entries as a standard, but to deploy this to all games would require some effort. In addition, any attempt at creating a "model" PDT for the ACWGC would require that everyone agree on all of the other parameters. As a practical matter, members will need to modify the PDTs for those scenarios in which they intend to introduce this factor.

Author:  John Ferry [ Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

Overland uses the weather option in all pdts. It gives at least three weather conditions, at 7 am, 2 pm and 9 pm, based on "Civil War Weather in Virginia" by Robert Krick. So with this reference you could post accurate conditions for ANY Civil War battle that took place in Virginia. The pdts could be even more detailed, but three (at least) entries per day from 4 May to 26 June was plenty for my creaky fingers.
John Ferry
Overland co-designer

Author:  John Ferry [ Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

:idea:
Another thought occurred to be regarding Krick's data after checking out the Gettysburg pdt:
He records the times of sunrise and sunset for every day, so your pdt could be crazy-detailed if that were included. I don't think the pdt has to follow the time increments of the hour, twenty minutes and forty minutes. You could put, like, 4:45 and the program would automatically make it effective at 5:00. You could use the exact times and let the computer figure it out. The same thing applies to reinforcements, by the way. In a 20-minute scenario, if your scenario states that a brigade will arrive at $;30, the program will bring it in at 5:40
John Ferry
Overland co-designer

Author:  John Ferry [ Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

Checking out Gettysburg weather pdt, I see something that is not right. If an entry for 7:40 pm for instance is labeled as "Twilight" because it is getting dark, "twilight" will register as the label or comment on every night turn until dawn, or whenever you have a new entry, such as "near dawn" In Overland, starting with the first night turn, I put something like "Clear night, temp 60 degrees" or something non committal such as only the temperature reading.

Author:  simovitch [ Wed Mar 11, 2015 8:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

I didn't know what to use here really. Now that you mention it though, maybe using "(night rules)" would be a good idea.

Author:  John Ferry [ Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What About Those Dusk and Dawn Turns?

"Night rules" would be accurate, but wouldn't it spoil the nuance of having the weather spelled out as a realistic, of the moment, statement?
And its not really twilight, is it? More like "Black dark" to the pickets standing watch.
As I said, in Overland I either used the word "night" with a descriptive adjective, or I was non committal, and only gave the temp.
Impressive job for June and July of '63. Far more elaborate and detailed than my attempt.
John Ferry
Overland co-designer

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