load-option: Add elapsed time to game

[Mr. Scruffy]

This is a fairly simple suggestion (TL:DR - just read the bold parts):

I am currently between launch windows and i really dont like time-warping for several months. I cant give you any rational reason for this - it´s just i really dont like to massively timewarp outside ongoing missions. What i often do instead is to keep the game running in the background at some medium warp-level, just to cut down on the waiting period a bit, while still having the impression of time actually elapsing.

So what i have often found myself wishing for is a tick-box in the loadgame-dialogue, that would allow the game to add the elapsed realtime since the latest alteration of the savefile (as obtainable by OS-standards - so save-format would not have to be changed) to the saved gametime. This way, i´d not even have to start my computer in order to have the planets move. If you played your save last time two days (48 hours) ago and tick that box (which is always off by default) upon loading it, those 48 hours will be added to your gametime, just as if you´d have had the game running in real time for the entire time.

In order to make this work, the game would have to "cheat" a little, since, of course, it would still have to process that elapsed time with its flight-paths at some point. That should be done, as fast as CPU allows, in the background (maybe give a process massage on screeen), during the loading process (assuming the box is ticked), before the KSC appears on screen. Else than that, implementation should be super-simple: One control-element (the labeled tick-box), two data-grabs (current system time + time of latest change to savefile), a substraction (the former - the later) and an addition (add result to gametime).

This would enhance the "off-line experience" of KSP tremendously - even if your computer is not even on, you´d still have that warm feeling of your latest mission being on its way, while you are really, i dunno, standing at the conveyer belt sorting out the faulty socks, or whatnot. "On wednesday, around 20:00h, Jeb will enter minmus´ SOI" and you´d be looking forward to it all the way through monday and tuesday (on which days, you are pre-occupied and cant play anyways). Sure, you can do this, now, too, but you´d have to waste a lot of energy for it, by having your comp run all the way through. With this, you could send your mission on its way and shut down the entire game for the duration of the flight and it would have arrived when you load the save (just be carefull you dont miss it - use out-of-game scheduling for that - an alarm-clock, f.e.).

PS: I am fully aware, that a lot of people will not see the point in this. You can time-warp after all. That feels different though. That´s what it is all about. Nothing rational, but more emotional. To just know, that the world of KSP continues, while i am not playing it (even if that´s achieved only by a "trick"), would go a long way to make me think of it, even when i am doing something completely different and the enjoyment of it, would surpass the hours logged on steam (if i had bought it via steam, that is), by a good margin.

[GluttonyReaper]

Don't really know how I feel about this, especially for players like me who only have time to play once a month or so, it might not be great to have to plan everything out in advance in real life just to make sure you don't miss your ship's next SOI change. Of course, if it's a togglable option, that's not really an issue.  

Also, I think having 1:1 scaling is a little bit pointless. Missions within Kerbin's SOI do fit quite nicely (although I can see the 6-hour Mun transfer causing issues with sleep ), taking days rather than weeks. But beyond that, it seems like you would never really even notice it. Even an Eve transfer takes months to complete, which seems far beyond fun - I'm not sure I would even remember much about the mission after that long. It might be noticeable somewhere like Jool, where there's some relatively short transfer times, but otherwise I can't see it affecting much. Even if you do scale it up so that interplanetary transfers take days rather than months, that basically removes the ability to use this within SOIs, with a Mun transfer taking just minutes, which probably isn't the effect you were going for.

Still, an interesting idea.  

[Mr. Scruffy]

Well, months is okay. I play KSP in ´bursts´ mostly, meaning, i may play nothing but KSP for like 3 days, and then, after i completed what i set out to do (this time around, it was my first mining contract) i may well end up not playing it for a month or two (but still fire it up occassionaly, just to let some time pass on slow warps). To have time elapse in between would go a long way for me - even for inter-planetary transfers and launch windows. I think it would be really nice, if i could optionally keep a real date in my mind, when my Duna-probe is going to arrive. That doesnt mean, i wont touch the game until then - there a lot of other stuff to do, after all - but each time i would use warp in the meantime, i´d have to adjust the real arrival date of that probe. No biggie. On the other hand, i would be almost guranteed to play KSP on that date, when it finally comes, and the days prior i would get hyped - like it was real, sort of...

Right now, i feel like i am sort of missing out, whenever i dont have KSP running, even if it would just be for the sake of having time elapse in its world. With that option, i would feel like i was progressing (and by virtue of keeping the dates in mind and waiting them out at least partially, deserving that progression) in the game, even when i am not playing it. As said - it´s mostly about emotional attachment for when you are NOT playing the game.

PS: Maybe there should be a safeguard extra auto-save whenever you load a game with that tick-box enabled so that if you ´overshot´, but didnt think you did, you can still roll back to before all that time elapsed.

[pandaman]

Yes, definitely an interesting idea.

I can see the appeal, but I guess for most of us real life would prevent us from getting to the computer at the right time to execute the crucial manoeuvre, especially several weeks ahead that we just can't plan to that level of detail.   That, and I personally would not like to have to wait 2 years to drop my probe into Jool's atmosphere.

But the idea itself does have some merit, so perhaps a mod that gives that kind of function, with some control options to cater for players' real life circumstances could be interesting, but not really something I would use personally.