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Post by neil on Apr 20, 2021 18:36:55 GMT
I've been spending a bit too much time thinking about the Colonial calendar and how it would work on Poseidon. really getting into the nitty-gritty detail of it. There's things like the day being 30 hours and 43 seconds long, so you can't convert between Colonial dates and CE dates at the level of hours. There's also that the year is 30.43 days long, so three years out of seven have to be leap years, with 331 days. And then there's the zero of the calendar. If the days are "Since Planetfall", why would the calendar start at "1 year since planetfall", especially as the Athena colonists were the types who would understand the problems in the CE calendar of having no year zero. In the end, I wrote a chunk of Python to convert between Colonial dates and times, and CE dates and times. I've posted the code on the Blue Planet wiki. I've also added forms to convert between Colonial and CE dates to the Colonial calendar page on the wiki. The bad news is, the dates given in the book don't line up with the dates I've calculated or the dates that come out of Bluedive's date calculator. And they're not just a few days off, either. I think there's something a bit fishy with some of the precise dates given in the BP books; easy done when you're putting together such a work. Anyway, have a play with the conversion forms and let me know what you think! |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 20, 2021 19:21:45 GMT
Oh, I wasn't aware the Bluedive calculator was still online! Hey, but great job on yours too, mate. Interesting how the calculations mismatch by that much. Would be interesting to know how Bluebyte built theirs. So on the table with the fixed dates that you've posted next to your calculator, we have Planetfall date as shown in the books - and all other dates calculated with your algorithm, yes? I noticed that the destruction of Atlantis is shown with the CE date as per Moderator's Guide but the SP date is 76.33 - different than the Moderator's Guide SP date: 94.33 It would be great if we could figure out where the discrepancy is - I'm sure this would help Jeff, especially with the app to be designed after the KS!  |
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Post by neil on Apr 20, 2021 20:29:01 GMT
Oh, I wasn't aware the Bluedive calculator was still online! Hey, but great job on yours too, mate. Interesting how the calculations mismatch by that much. Would be interesting to know how Bluebyte built theirs. So on the table with the fixed dates that you've posted next to your calculator, we have Planetfall date as shown in the books - and all other dates calculated with your algorithm, yes? I noticed that the destruction of Atlantis is shown with the CE date as per Moderator's Guide but the SP date is 76.33 - different than the Moderator's Guide SP date: 94.33 It would be great if we could figure out where the discrepancy is - I'm sure this would help Jeff, especially with the app to be designed after the KS! The dates in the table use the CE or Colonial date, whichever is specified in the text. The other is calculated from that. Yes, the Atlantis date is the most strange one. It's so precise in the text, but those dates don't agree with what either my calculations or Bluedive's. I think it probably was a "good enough" calculation when the text was first written, before mildly obsessive fans got into more detail than is healthy! Yes, I was hoping to mention it to Jeff. But plenty of time before the app development starts. |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 20, 2021 20:59:11 GMT
Mildly obsessive is an excellent approach to such aspects of the setting.  Even the simple act of highlighting the discrepancy is a big help in ensuring everything's nicely watertight. I'll message Jeff if you haven't yet and let's see what are his thoughts on this. |
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Post by neil on Apr 21, 2021 8:00:28 GMT
Mildly obsessive is an excellent approach to such aspects of the setting. Even the simple act of highlighting the discrepancy is a big help in ensuring everything's nicely watertight. I'll message Jeff if you haven't yet and let's see what are his thoughts on this. "Watertight". Feel free to message Jeff, thank you. I've not contacted him about this yet. I wanted to see what other people thought, perhaps spotting errors, before I turned up with a "definitive" set of date conversions. |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 21, 2021 11:07:16 GMT
Hehe, man, I'm proud of that. Cool stuff, I've messaged him. Your calculator shows the same date for the destruction of Atlantis as Bluedive's, doesn't it? Just one year earlier, as he went for 001.01 for Planetfall. To my statistically inclined brain that means you guys are doing your calculations with a very precise decimal whereas perhaps Jeff was rounding up higher? We'll know soon. |
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 21, 2021 12:08:17 GMT
I can't comment on the calculations themselves, as I haven't looked into them, but what if they didn't have multiple leap years but rather every 7 years had an extra few days to make up the difference? Would the accumulated difference throughout those 7 years be building up to enough to cause serious problems with anything?
It's a *very* different sort of game, but I liked the way that was handled in Exalted. They had a year of X months of exactly the same number of days, followed by a 5 day period called "Calibration" to make up the difference, which was like an end of year festival/holiday/celebration for everyone.
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Post by neil on Apr 21, 2021 14:03:52 GMT
I can't comment on the calculations themselves, as I haven't looked into them, but what if they didn't have multiple leap years but rather every 7 years had an extra few days to make up the difference? Would the accumulated difference throughout those 7 years be building up to enough to cause serious problems with anything? It's a *very* different sort of game, but I liked the way that was handled in Exalted. They had a year of X months of exactly the same number of days, followed by a 5 day period called "Calibration" to make up the difference, which was like an end of year festival/holiday/celebration for everyone. I don't think there's an overwhelming reason either way. The year, defined has "time taken to go around the sun," or "time for the sun to move through the whole zodiac," or "when seasons start" isn't a whole number of days. Different years need to be different lengths to keep your "count of days" not too far off from "where the sun is in the sky" and "when to plant the crops." Piling up all the spare days into a "Calibration" reset (for Poseidon, a three-day period every seven years) just means your written calendar accumulates differences from the sun for a few years, then a big realignment to bring them back. Having leap days every year or so keeps the written and celestial years closer for the whole time. It makes a difference if you're relying on the sun for planting crops, or using the stars to navigate. Given that there probably aren't huge seasonal swings in weather throughout most of the Pacifica Archipelago, the only reason would be using the sun and stars for navigation. That would, I think, push the colonists towards having intermittent leap years, to keep the year-on-year deviation small. But it's not a big thing. But anyway, wasn't the Exalted calendar because the year isn't a whole number of months? It would be like the CE calendar having twelve months of thirty days, followed by a five day (or six day) period of "Calibration" to finish the year. |
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Post by neil on Apr 21, 2021 15:02:12 GMT
Oh, I wasn't aware the Bluedive calculator was still online! Hey, but great job on yours too, mate. Interesting how the calculations mismatch by that much. Would be interesting to know how Bluebyte built theirs. So on the table with the fixed dates that you've posted next to your calculator, we have Planetfall date as shown in the books - and all other dates calculated with your algorithm, yes? I noticed that the destruction of Atlantis is shown with the CE date as per Moderator's Guide but the SP date is 76.33 - different than the Moderator's Guide SP date: 94.33 It would be great if we could figure out where the discrepancy is - I'm sure this would help Jeff, especially with the app to be designed after the KS! I had a poke around at Bluedive's, and I'm not sure what they're doing. There's definitely some confusion between synodic and siderial day lengths, and that's not helping. (See this article for the difference.) I think they're just splitting day and year boundaries at particular numbers of seconds since planetfall. But I could very easily be wrong! |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 21, 2021 15:26:34 GMT
Oh, I wasn't aware the Bluedive calculator was still online! Hey, but great job on yours too, mate. Interesting how the calculations mismatch by that much. Would be interesting to know how Bluebyte built theirs. So on the table with the fixed dates that you've posted next to your calculator, we have Planetfall date as shown in the books - and all other dates calculated with your algorithm, yes? I noticed that the destruction of Atlantis is shown with the CE date as per Moderator's Guide but the SP date is 76.33 - different than the Moderator's Guide SP date: 94.33 It would be great if we could figure out where the discrepancy is - I'm sure this would help Jeff, especially with the app to be designed after the KS! I had a poke around at Bluedive's, and I'm not sure what they're doing. There's definitely some confusion between synodic and siderial day lengths, and that's not helping. (See this article for the difference.) I think they're just splitting day and year boundaries at particular numbers of seconds since planetfall. But I could very easily be wrong! Aha, time to put my learning pants on! I thought the only real difference between your calculators was the .00 year. |
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Post by neil on Apr 22, 2021 6:20:23 GMT
Another thought about the calendar and timekeeping. The Poseidon day is 30 hours 43 seconds long. That's 43 seconds "outside" the normal day. What superstitions have grown up about that time?
Is it a time to make solemn oaths and promises, that cannot be broken in "normal" time?
Is it the moment to break promises, announce divorces, as the normal rules don't apply?
Is it when, if you listen carefully, you can hear the nereids whisper the secrets of Poseidon?
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Post by Pawel on Apr 22, 2021 6:55:14 GMT
Ohhh, man, I love those!! Athena Project colonists were a pragmatic, super-educated bunch, but they did get to interact more than anybody else with things way outside anybody's scope of understanding.
Another type of superstition I imagine could be related to the evening activities in native communities. Something that would discourage excessive procrastination, as overly tired body & mind are prone to making costly mistakes. So, if you don't finish off your work completely before 30 hours 0 seconds, something might snap, or break, or fail you. So either speed it up, or stop what you're doing before you get too tired.
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Post by neil on Apr 22, 2021 7:16:10 GMT
Ohhh, man, I love those!! Athena Project colonists were a pragmatic, super-educated bunch, but they did get to interact more than anybody else with things way outside anybody's scope of understanding. Another type of superstition I imagine could be related to the evening activities in native communities. Something that would discourage excessive procrastination, as overly tired body & mind are prone to making costly mistakes. So, if you don't finish off your work completely before 30 hours 0 seconds, something might snap, or break, or fail you. So either speed it up, or stop what you're doing before you get too tired. I like that. A superstition as a heuristic for avoiding mistakes. A 43 second silence, to contemplate the day that's gone and the day ahead. |
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Post by Admin on Apr 23, 2021 17:09:34 GMT
I've been spending a bit too much time thinking about the Colonial calendar and how it would work on Poseidon. really getting into the nitty-gritty detail of it. There's things like the day being 30 hours and 43 seconds long, so you can't convert between Colonial dates and CE dates at the level of hours. There's also that the year is 30.43 days long, so three years out of seven have to be leap years, with 331 days. And then there's the zero of the calendar. If the days are "Since Planetfall", why would the calendar start at "1 year since planetfall", especially as the Athena colonists were the types who would understand the problems in the CE calendar of having no year zero. In the end, I wrote a chunk of Python to convert between Colonial dates and times, and CE dates and times. I've posted the code on the Blue Planet wiki. I've also added forms to convert between Colonial and CE dates to the Colonial calendar page on the wiki. The bad news is, the dates given in the book don't line up with the dates I've calculated or the dates that come out of Bluedive's date calculator. And they're not just a few days off, either. I think there's something a bit fishy with some of the precise dates given in the BP books; easy done when you're putting together such a work. Anyway, have a play with the conversion forms and let me know what you think! Woohoo! More to fix! Seriously though, I deeply appreciate this kid of thing and will definitely address it in the updates. I have to admit to not checking the date math (or being very good at it myself) in everything freelancers wrote, and so I am not surprised there are discrepancies. Will definitely address it going forward. Neil - if you are interested in selling your program, perhaps we can use it as the back end of the stretch goal app? |
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Post by Admin on Apr 23, 2021 17:12:29 GMT
Another thought about the calendar and timekeeping. The Poseidon day is 30 hours 43 seconds long. That's 43 seconds "outside" the normal day. What superstitions have grown up about that time? Is it a time to make solemn oaths and promises, that cannot be broken in "normal" time? Is it the moment to break promises, announce divorces, as the normal rules don't apply? Is it when, if you listen carefully, you can hear the nereids whisper the secrets of Poseidon? This is cool stuff and exactly the emergent kind of creativity that makes RPGs so awesome IMO. Reminds me of the extra 25(?) minutes in the Mars Trilogy books by Kim Stanley Robinson. |
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Even the simple act of highlighting the discrepancy is a big help in ensuring everything's nicely watertight. I'll message Jeff if you haven't yet and let's see what are his thoughts on this. 
