Times in multiplayer

Ironclad · Post by **Ironclad** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:25 pm

What determines the times shown for turn updates in multiplayer? Even my own entries are out of sych by several hours with my (gmt) profile time.

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:27 pm

I think it uses local time on your PC, at least for your turns. While I haven't watched them closely, my impression is that the times for my turns (and to a less certain level) and my opponents have been displayed in the time zone I have set for my PC.

Chris

Ironclad · Post by **Ironclad** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:50 pm

Its not doing that for me. My latest turn actioned shows five hours behind my pc time.

Tim-Pelican · Post by **Tim-Pelican** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 9:51 am

I see exactly the same thing. My clock is set correctly to GMT, and all the timestamps on my multiplayer games are five hours behind.

maximvs · Post by **maximvs** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 12:01 pm

I have noticed the same. I'm in the UK and even when playing against other players in the UK the times are out by some hours.

I think it's because Slitherine actually only exits in a parallel universe. Fortunately, that universe is quite similar to ours, with one of the differences being that they are five hours ahead. This also explains why they are so uniquely responsive to their customers in a way that no other software company in our universe is!

CheerfullyInsane · Post by **CheerfullyInsane** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 4:28 pm

batesmotel wrote:I think it uses local time on your PC, at least for your turns. While I haven't watched them closely, my impression is that the times for my turns (and to a less certain level) and my opponents have been displayed in the time zone I have set for my PC.

Chris

It doesn't.
I'm fairly sure it uses the servertime, which is EST (or GMT-5).

Makes sense when you think about it. If all games used the local time for every player no matter what timezone, you'd have turns getting played 5 hours before the opponent sent his turn.
Field of Glory, Star Trek Style

Not that it matters anyway.
Ever since installing the SysTrayTool I've never taken notice of when the last turn was posted.

Lars

Tim-Pelican · Post by **Tim-Pelican** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 4:42 pm

CheerfullyInsane wrote: I'm fairly sure it uses the servertime, which is EST (or GMT-5).

Makes sense when you think about it. If all games used the local time for every player no matter what timezone, you'd have turns getting played 5 hours before the opponent sent his turn.
Field of Glory, Star Trek Style

No, it doesn't make sense, and it wouldn't cause time-warp.

Collect the timestamp and the time-zone from the client, store on the server in UTC, display on the other player's client in their local time-zone. This is standard best-practice for anything network based, you always run, store and calculate in UTC, and adjust for the user's location at the point of display only.

The turn was always taken at one absolute time (including the time-zone) - there really is no need for ambiguity.

CheerfullyInsane · Post by **CheerfullyInsane** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 11:12 pm

Tim-Pelican wrote:No, it doesn't make sense, and it wouldn't cause time-warp.

Collect the timestamp and the time-zone from the client, store on the server in UTC, display on the other player's client in their local time-zone. This is standard best-practice for anything network based, you always run, store and calculate in UTC, and adjust for the user's location at the point of display only.

The turn was always taken at one absolute time (including the time-zone) - there really is no need for ambiguity.

Fair enough.
My earlier comment was not exactly a serious one. *LOL*

However, the whole UTC to and fro seems a little bit of an overkill.
Admittedly, I'm not a programmer and know sod-all about networks and their standards.
But seeing as we players can (more or less successfully) calculate the odds of a phalanx attack, it seems that adding/subtracting a few hours from a set standard time surely isn't beyond us.
As long as there actually *is* a standard time being posted, it could be lunar for all I care.

Lars