a time problem

[Drakon Master]

I was just wondering if there is a call for a time limit

eg. Say, in the scenerio, some dude told you that you had to be back by a certain time. I was hoping there was a call to get the ticks from when you leave the place till you get back.

[Kelandon]

In short, yes. The call tick_difference does this. There are some issues, however. For instance, when a saved game is reloaded in the outdoors, the variables get reset, so any normal practice of setting a variable to get_current_tick and testing tick_difference doesn't work. You could get around this using SDFs. The dehydration script I wrote ( here ) demonstrates how to use SDFs to keep track of time.

 

Basically, the idea is to use two SDFs as two digits in base-256. That is, the first one is set to 0 for all number 0-255. Then, for 256-511, the first one is 1, and the second one ranges over the same numbers. If you must, you can even use a third SDF if you expect the tick number to be obscenely high.

[Lilith]

For an idea of what's meant by "obscenely high", using two SDFs allows 65536 ticks, which is just over 13 days. Using a third SDF would allow you over 3000 days, which is hopefully more than you'll ever need.