History Rework

[ercarp]

Describe your suggestion in full detail below:

Currently, the starting year of 1.1.1 in the mod reflects 582 BDP (Before Dark Portal) when converted to the canon timeline. In my opinion, this creates unnecessary restrictions on the mod which could pose far bigger problems in the long run.

As it's not possible to use negative dates in the game files, anything that happened prior to 582 BDP is completely out of the picture. Including, but not limited to:

• Possible future bookmarks centered around the following wars: War of the Shifting Sands, Gurubashi Civil War, Troll Wars, War of the Satyr, etc. The list goes on.
• Characters older than 605 years (long-lived races such as Elves and Draenei for example).
  • Tyrande, Illidan, and Malfurion as an example were all 13,000+ years old during the Third War. You can find their exact ages in the Warcraft III Game Manual.
  • Velen is also said to have been 25,000+ years old, although we could probably do something else in the case of characters where their exact ages are truly unknown.
• Various historical events. Consult the timeline linked above for reference.

Proposition

I suggest we extend the history of Azeroth by 30,000 years, making the new starting date 30001.1.1. I think this is a good number as it gives ample room for long-lived races to have birth records that are more lore accurate, and a nice even number will make it easier to update the existing dates.

Keep in mind that this would not mean we will have bookmarks dating back 30,000 years—in fact, any Pre-Sundering bookmarks are out of the picture due to the map being completely different during that time (yes, no War of the Ancients unfortunately).

Some of you might be thinking: "I don't want my start date to be 30001.1.1, I think that looks terrible. I prefer the smaller numbers."

But this is not a problem due to the magic of localization. We can have the game date back thousands of years for modding purposes while retaining the look of smaller numbers in-game. As an example, it's possible to make it so years greater than or equal to 30001.1.1 will instead display ### KC in-game (KC standing for King's Calendar). They've already done this on some other full conversion mods.

Implementation

While I may have made this sound like a relatively simple matter, the implementation is still a pretty large undertaking as it involves updating dates in dozens of different files for hundreds of different entries, probably entirely by hand unless someone knows of a way to automate the process.

[zumbak04]

I'll leave comments on why I think it's not good.

1. Such changes are needed only a few characters like elves and draenei. Province history, title history, tech history won't be using the dates further than the War of the Three Hammers.
2. It will make history dates difficult to read in the game files: 299578 year etc.
3. It will require some kind of script to transfer dates, about 3-2 hours to make.

But this is not a problem due to the magic of localization. We can have the game date back thousands of years for modding purposes while retaining the look of smaller numbers in-game.

4. It will require time too.
5. I fear the game could lag handling big numbers in dates.

Thus, I think it's a too big sacrifice to make for a few lore characters.

[ercarp]

2. It will make history dates difficult to read in the game files: 299578 year etc.

This is why I proposed adding 30,000 to the current years instead of some arbitrary number. The majority of the dates we are working with will appear almost the same as before, with only the number 30 added in front of them.

4. It will require time too.

The LotR Realms team has already done this for their mod. As I'm a dev on their project as well, I could probably ask permission to use their file as a template/guide if we're not too proud to rely on another mod's work. 😉

5. I fear the game could lag handling big numbers in dates.

You're obviously more knowledgeable in this subject so I can't say how valid your fears are, but the Realms mod has been available to play for a while (although the world size is still considerably smaller than ours) and I don't think performance has been an issue.

[zumbak04]

You're obviously more knowledgeable in this subject so I can't say how valid your fears are, but the Realms mod has been available to play for a while (although the world size is still considerably smaller than ours) and I don't think performance has been an issue.

That's why such changes are better to make when we have everything set and can test the mod performance.

This is why I proposed adding 30,000 to the current years instead of some arbitrary number. The majority of the dates we are working with will appear almost the same as before, with only the number 30 added in front of them.

Anyway, the Gnoll War will be 29925. And 99% of the dates will be set in 29000.

[ercarp]

That's why such changes are better to make when we have everything set and can test the mod performance.

I can live with that. Sounds good, makes sense.

Anyway, the Gnoll War will be 29925. And 99% of the dates will be set in 29000.

Using the conversions I had planned for us, Gnoll War would actually be 30508. You may have thought I wanted the current 583 starting date to be 30000.1.1, which is not what I meant. It would be 30583.1.1, so the current year + 30,000. I may have been a bit unclear on it.

I added a column to my "fact-checking spreadsheet" if you want to see what the new years would look like when converted.

[ercarp]

I also asked the LotR Realms devs if there have been any performance issues caused by the larger numbers, and they said no. Apparently, the difference between something like 1,000 and 20,000 isn't large enough computationally to cause any sort of noticeable performance issues.

[zumbak04]

I wouldn't reach 9999.

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