We all know DM uses time and delays in 1/10ths of a second.
But did you know that there's an SI prefix for 1/10? That would be deci. It's not used very commonly (Decimeters? We just skip from meters to centimeters, 1/100, and millimeters, 1/1000!). Only decibels (dB) really come to mind.
When referring to DM's use of 1/10th seconds, why not save some space and simply call them deciseconds? (not to be confused with dekaseconds, which would be 10s of seconds)
The instruction sleep X will delay code by X deciseconds.
spawn(X) runs its statement(s) after X deciseconds, but doesn't keep the rest of the proc waiting (unless X is negative).
The world.time, world.timeofday, and world.realtime variables are measured in deciseconds.
The world.tick_lag variable is also measured in deciseconds. (world.fps is 10 / world.tick_lag, which would be reciprocal seconds, or Hertz, but that guy gets enough recognition already).
So, what do you say? Anyone else gonna start saying "deciseconds" instead of silly "1/10th seconds" from now on? I know I will.
I mean, other programming languages measure time in milliseconds, but who needs them anyways.
ID:1292268
 Jun 14 2013, 3:46 am
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Jun 14 2013, 5:21 am
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Rushnut
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That's implying that everyone uses tick_lag = 10, which could cause confusion. Why not simply call it "ticks" like the rest of the world?
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Rushnut wrote:
That's implying that everyone uses tick_lag = 10, which could cause confusion. Why not simply call it "ticks" like the rest of the world? Be different man, that's what makes you special. The world would be boring if everyone does "the same as the rest of the world.". | |
A tick is defined by tick_lag. A decisecond is one tenth of a second in real time. One is arbitrary, while the other is relatively constant.
sleep 10 is always a one second delay, regardless of tick_lag. | |
Kaiochao wrote:
A tick is defined by tick_lag. A decisecond is one tenth of a second in real time. One is arbitrary, while the other is relatively constant. mob/verb/sleepa() I think you're incorrect... | |
Fine. The game can't do anything faster than tick_lag, but that's as far as it goes.
I'm gonna go ahead and use the "I'm on my phone" excuse. edit: No one uses a tick lag greater than 1, I hope. I'm all about the 25-30 fps. | |
You can still hold 25-30 fps with a higher tick_lag if you adjust them both accordingly, I remember having a fairly low tick_lag in Acid Rain 2 so as to make movement more smooth and allow a great diversity of speed in rain drops.
This was before Pixel Movement obviously. I'm just saying, in order to have a standard for the way in which people describe something, it has to actually work. Deciseconds doesn't work in a fairly common variety of scenarios, and as such it would be ass backwards to use it. | |
Unless your fps is less than 10 (tick lag > 1), sleep X will delay X deciseconds. A fps greater than 10 will make ticks shorter than one decisecond.
Higher fps means lower tick lag, meaning shorter ticks, and no difference in deciseconds. | |
Maybe if you released some kind of generic plugin code to reformat the system with the decisecond, I don't see people adopting.
If you have something for me to throw into my game though, I will. | |
This isn't a feature request for the software. I'm pointing out that since 1/10th seconds are deciseconds, and since all of DM's time-based properties are based on 1/10th seconds, we should call them "deciseconds" instead of "1/10th seconds."
It's a wording suggestion. It has no effect on anything, but it's the truth. | |
Ah guess I misunderstood in the process of quickly reading the thread.
I like the idea though, we need to use technical terminology to the utmost effect. | |