Time System

The time system serves as an integral part of Gardens of the Galaxy, providing dynamic updates and information to other dependent classes. Since this is a farming game, the core goals revolve around time as you build and expand your farm over time while growing plants that take time to harvest. Hence, it is essential that an intuitive yet easy-to-understand implementation of the time system is required so that other classes can interact easily with the time system and that valuable information is provided to these dependent classes.

This implementation of the time system provides working in-game time, where each day in the game lasts 12 minutes in real time. A visual implementation of the in-game time is also present at the top left of the screen, which has an indicator (sun or moon) as well as the current hour of the day (in 12-hour time). The time will dynamically update on the UI, and the indicator will update to match that time as well. For example, as the day turns into night, the sun will slowly set and the moon will eventually rise. This ensures that the player will always be informed of the current time through text and images, providing a much more visually appealing experience for the player. The implementation also provides a pause and unpause function as well as a function to set the time to aid in debugging and testing to improve workflow.

Display

UI Design

(include image of frame, a few indicators for hours to show the change, and then an image of everything together)

Implementation

(how UI is constructed, frame stacked with indicator etc)" (uml diagram would be nice) (how animation works)

Inspirations

(jsut atlk about pixel art theme or something lmao)

Functionality

The functionality is centred in GameTime, GameTimeDisplay and TimeController within services

Implementation

The TimeController class serves as the control centre for all things that are dependent on the time. It is initialised in the constructor for GameTime and is stored within the current instance of GameTime, so when a new GameTime service is created at the start of a new game, a TimeController service will be created automatically. This ensures that each new game will have its own TimeController.

It follows an observer design pattern, where TimeController is the observable sending updates to the observers that are registered within the class. The class contains a private variable List<Entity> entities, which can be any form of entity such as a plant and can be registered or removed from the TimeController class. It also contains another observer GameTimeDisplay timeDisplay which is registered automatically and these observers will receive updates from TimeController; update() for entities and updateDisplay() for the UI display.

TimeController also contains functions to improve ease of use for dependent classes. Since GameTime returns the time in milliseconds, getTimeInSeconds() returns the time in seconds to make it easier to understand. Functions getTimeOfDay() returns the current time of the day in milliseconds and getHour() returns the current hour as an integer.

UpdateDisplay() Logic

UpdateDisplay() calculates the current hour of the game, then calls timeDisplay.update(hour) with the hour that was just caluculated. This lets GameTimeDisplay know to update the text to the current hour and update the day-night indicator to the image for the given hour. The display will not be updated if the game is paused and the current hour is calulated by:

int timeInDay = (int) timeSource.getActiveTime() % 720000 - this gets the current time of the day in milliseconds by using the modulus function. It divides it by 720000 as thats how many milliseconds are in 12 minutes which is the length of a day in the game. The remainder from the modulus operation is the current time of the day.

this.hour = (int) Math.floor(timeInDay / 30000) - this then gets the current hour of the day as an integer, by dividing by 30000 which is 30 seconds or 1 hour in game. This value is floored as we are only interested in the hour.

Pause() Logic

The pause() and unpause() function will allow for support for a pause menu, as well as assist in debugging and testing. Each time the game is paused, the timestamp is recorded this.pausedAt = timeSource.getTime() and the Boolean paused is set to true. When the game is unpaused the difference between the current time and the time that the game was paused at is calculated timeSource.addPauseOffset(**timeSource.getTimeSince(this.pausedAt)**). This duration is added to the variable pausedTime in GameTime, and then the total real time in game can be accessed by getActiveTime() which returns `TimeUtils.timeSinceMillis(startTime) - pausedTime'.

How To Use

Access The Time Controller

ServiceLocator.getTimeSource().getTimeController()

Register, Remove and Update Entities

• ServiceLocator.getTimeSource().getTimeController().register('Entity')
• ServiceLocator.getTimeSource().getTimeController().remove('Entity')
• ServiceLocator.getTimeSource().getTimeController().update()

Get Time, ActiveTime

• ServiceLocator.getTimeSource().getTime() - time since the start of the game including paused periods
• ServiceLocator.getTimeSource().getActiveTime() - time since the start of the game excluding paused periods

Future Development

A setTime() function is currently is works to assist in debugging and testing