[GD-General] time

[Brett B. <res...@ga...>]

Howdy,
I have been wrestling with time in my engine for some time now (no pun =
intended). I wondered how other people are handling time? Our game =
engine is specifically designed for PS2/Gcn, but it runs under Windows =
too. Specifically...

What are the different components that people are using? We currently =
have a single 32-bit time variable initialized to zero at startup and =
that's it. Each frame we either count v-blanks, use system ticks/timers =
or OS facilities custom for each platform to increment the global time =
value, usually stored in microseconds and rounded up to millisecond =
resolution for use in the engine. Works well and I have done this for =
every game engine I have developed so far.

Feels like a change may be warranted though as online gaming becomes =
more popular, since if the game was to run for many days it would =
overflow and timestamping may be problematic. So now I'm thinking of =
adding a time struct (different from ANSI C though) whereby we store the =
year, month, day, hour and minute, and second and also a conversion =
struct that says how many mins->hour->day->month->year so we can convert =
"real" time into game time. I can pack this into 64-bits, but then again =
a simple 64-bit timer using the old way to simply count ticks would also =
eliminate the overflow problem anyway and so I'm questioning the right =
thing to do. Also, I hoping to be able to use absolute time for certain =
things where we used to use delta times. What are people using for =
timestamps for online games? Does each game session reset the server =
session time to prevent eventual overflow? Or is a more robust timing =
mechanism used? Are  people using microseconds? milliseconds?

Thanks,
Brett