Well... I was playing oblivion the day before , the question just came to my mind and I wanted to share it. Why are the days 24 hours long in TES games? I mean in a completely different universe, I would prefer -a completely different universe-... For example a year can be 19 months and a day can be 15 hours... Just to give the feeling...

They probabably kept it at 24 hours so that you wouldn't get confused about what time you are supposed to show up for work/school in the real world.

I don't have any problems with a 24 hour day and a 365.25 day year. I don't really see what the point would be in changing this - for me it wouldn't add anything to the experience but it could make gameplay unnecessarily odd.

I thought of this before. And yes that would be better... :tops:

Time scale could be anything between Tamriel and the real world, since it's only an .ini change away.

But the reason we have the real-world time system like we do is because the ancient Egyptians had good mathematicians. They devised the pattern to track the time of day based on divisibility by 4 and 3, I believe.

Mathematicians of Tamriel would likely devise something similar.

Are you high? )


No it's fine as it is, besides i can't keep track of what day/month it is anyway so it makes no difference to me )

Good point, there. A leap year would be a nice, simple addition, if not too much to implement. It could be some kind of special day, where I can do special things. Perhaps I could go into certain Daedric realms on those days? :shrug:

It isnt very important. But just one thing, do they ever use the term 4 o′clock? Just an example. I have never heard/seen them use an exact time in the games!
They say such things like:
`meet me at the BIG inn in the small town at midnight′
but never:
`meet me at the BIG inn in the small town at 12 o′clock′

Hm... That makes it very free for you to comprehend the whole thing... That also makes sure that the time scaling in Oblivion (and other games? Morrowind got it, I am sure bout that) makes sense! Nirn′s size and the size of Magnus makes it so that one RT (Real-Tamriel) minute is 2 RL seconds! Mathematic failure? I think I did it right...
Heureka?

time is really just a concept, anyways. nothing says that the "real" day is 24 hours long, its just a measurement we invented. tamriel has the same measurements for our convenience - its hard enough to remember what the different days/months mean without having to convert the time as well.

I think you should quit skooma

As for TES, game day is fine.

EDIT: I mean I like this, whether in TES or real life. If I made a game this would be my view.

24 hours a day.
12 months a year.
30 days a month.
360 days a year.

Yeah, the devs' reason for doing that is convenience. If you make a fantasy world overly outlandish, like adding in a second sun just for the fun of it, it causes problems. People don't relate as well to a world that has no similarities to their own, but at the same time it's not good fantasy if it's too similar. Basic fantasy worldbuilding principle.

I'm not sure if the Tes sun orbits Nirn, or if the whole sky just kind of moves like a bubble. Seeing as how the sun is a hole and the planets aren't really round it gets hard to tell. On the surface Nirn looks like real life, but once you get into it it gets more weird. Hard to tell really.

But yes, they have twenty four hour days because it's light for fifteen or sixteen hours and dark for the rest. They have sixty minute hours for the same reason we do, someone invented it a long time ago and that's what we use today. Could a twenty four hour day be broken up into thirty minute intervals and become a forty eight hour day? Of course, but the normal way is simpler.

There's really no established reason, so I'd say just go with it. Make something up if you'd like.

The system is fine as it is, I still don't know my Tamrielic months and days properly.

Because people need their sleep thread/

You can add this mod to find out more easily http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15166 or go to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Oblivion.

I don't know how anyone in tamriel keeps the time anyway... there are no watches or clocks, there could be sundials but i haven't seen any... Yes i suppose they could judge by there shadow, that's probably the reason no one in game actually uses a numbered time. This poses another oddity, how do they even know when it's exactly midnight, because correct me if I'm wrong but there's no way to tell the time at night if you don't have a watch or clock.

24 hours and 12 months is OK I prefer it that way. It's not worth confusing the player for something so irrelevant IMO.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Shivering:Earil Specifically chronomancy, though I don't know if mortals have heard of it yet. I'm sure an enterprising young mage would have invented a spell to tell time by now. Since it is probably a fairly simple spell, I wouldn't be surprised if the Mages Guild enchanted cheap rings with it and sold them to people as watches. Problem solved

Though they probably do have sundials and whatnot; there are multiple ways of telling time without watches or the sun, you know.

24 hours and 12 months is okay with me.

That's basically it, it would just be easier for players to understand it if they kept details like the amount of hours in a day the same as real life. Making it different would just be unnecessarily confusing. Maybe if you're making a science-fiction setting and want to make your science really hard, you could have the timescale on an alien planet be different from Earth, but in a fantasy setting, if people can believe that a universe utterly unrelated to our own will have species that also exist on Earth as well has having cultures which in many ways strongly resemble Earth cultures, they can also accept that there would be the same amount of hours in a day.

Of course they already made it confusing by making up fictional names for the months, but seeing as you don't actually need to know which month of the year it is to understand the game anyway, it doesn't matter too much.

In theory this would probably be based in the same universe as were in according to theories there's only one universe (which makes sense) another universe means a different reality or alternative reality

but i get your point the orbit of the planet would be most likely different to our orbit of the sun but as for the 12 months that sounds about right

Those hourglasses maybe got something to do with it? Or like... Darkom said, Chronomancy.

Time is so dramatically scaled down, there's little point in changing the hours. As TES branches out, a change ought to make the year completely different. The Wheel may contract or expand, greatly altering the size of the Magnus, depending upon the Year (ie Year of Akatosh). A year of Akatosh might mean the largest of the suns, loosing more magicka into Oblivion and then to Nirn. I'm sure something could be done.

It's probably actually because the game was originally quite cliché. Dwarves where short, stumpy bearded men to start. I guess time didn't matter, since they wheren't concerned about the other worldly feel to the game.

Anyways, ignore that statement, let's just find our own, more fun reasons. ^_^

I am curious now what people said to declare the hour before clocks were invented...it's 3 'o sundial, my robe is probably done at the cleaners!

But this is one of the many reasons I hate the argument people often give about Nirn being a different planet, including when you try to compare in game races to real historical cultures (Yes, the Nords are not Vikings, but neither were the Goths, but I'm sure if you saw a picture of a Nord or a Goth, you would call them a Viking)

The point is, differences between Nirn and Earth are exceptions, not the rule. So, when there are differences, you can accept them, but it makes sense to question them if they are illogical differences, and the fact that it is a fictional fantasy world is not a proper explanation.

And who knows...maybe Nirn IS the Earth...1 million years in the future...o0oo0o0oo0o0o0oooo....