Daylight Fix

[Byteblazar]

Vanilla 7 Days to Die defaults to an 18-hour daylight + 6-hour night-time cycle, with dusk occurring at 22:00 (10 PM).

If you are anything like me, that means 4 things:

1. You enjoy some games having a certain degree of realism.
   
2. You are not afraid of the dark: you were born in it, molded by it.
   
3. You are awesome.
   
4. Therefore, you may have tried lowering the Daylight Length hoping to no longer keep seeing sunlight at 10 PM everyday...
   

The problem: Without this mod, lowering the Daylight Length (to 16, 14, or 12 hours) merely shifts the dawn, not the dusk. For example, if you set the Daylight Length to 12 hours, the dawn happens 6 hours later (starts at 10 AM instead of 4 AM), but the dusk still starts at 22:00 (10 PM). Moreover, you will notice the Sun is not even close to where it should be along the Equator (the east-west axis). This happens because the game uses 22:00 as the baseline to calculate where the Sun should be in the sky at any one time.



Vanilla




Length


Dawn


Noon


Dusk






18 hours


04:00


13:00 (1 PM)


22:00 (10 PM)




16 hours


06:00


14:00 (2 PM)


22:00 (10 PM)




14 hours


08:00


15:00 (3 PM)


22:00 (10 PM)




12 hours


10:00


16:00 (4 PM)


22:00 (10 PM)







The solution: With this mod, the game uses 12:00 PM as the baseline instead, which means the sun will always be right above your head at noon regardless of your chosen Daylight Length.
It also means you can finally see the sunset at a more realistic time. Even with the default (and maximum) 18-hour Daylight Length, the Sun will not set at 22:00 anymore. It will set at 21:00 instead, as seen in the images.



Modded




Length


Dawn


Noon


Dusk




18 hours


03:00


12:00


21:00 (9 PM)




16 hours


04:00


12:00


20:00 (8 PM)




14 hours


05:00


12:00


19:00 (7 PM)




12 hours


06:00


12:00


18:00 (6 PM)

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Screenshots​

Spoiler

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EAC must be off.​

Made for V1.4, but most likely works in other versions of the game too.​

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[FranticDan]

This has bugged me for many years!
My issue however is more about what time night time officially begins in-game, I'd love for a 7pm night time start and 5am morning.
Removing the daylight length setting and replaced with two different settings. Night time start, and day time start.

 

[Byteblazar]

I'd love for a 7pm night time start and 5am morning.

If you look closely at the second table in my post, you will see that setting the Daylight Length to 14 hours will give you dawn at 5am and dusk at 7pm.

 

[FranticDan]

If you look closely at the second table in my post, you will see that setting the Daylight Length to 14 hours will give you dawn at 5am and dusk at 7pm.

So you're saying, as far as the game is concerned, night time no longer starts at 10pm, so night spawns begin at 7pm and zombies start sprinting at 7pm?

 

[Byteblazar]

So you're saying, as far as the game is concerned, night time no longer starts at 10pm, so night spawns begin at 7pm and zombies start sprinting at 7pm?

Yup. Those things are tied to the dawn and dusk times. Somewhere else someone asked about trader opening and closing times and those are the only exception I can think of right now, because that is set in traders.xml (it is not tied to dawn and dusk).

 

[FranticDan]

Yup. Those things are tied to the dawn and dusk times. Somewhere else someone asked about trader opening and closing times and those are the only exception I can think of right now, because that is set in traders.xml (it is not tied to dawn and dusk).

This is perfect then, it has bugged me since 2016 that I couldn't change the time night time begins. Trader times are easy to change, plus I mostly don't use them personally.

 

[JoeSloeMoe]

An small side note. Gamestage is calculated using DaysAlive which ticks over at 7am not 6am. So gamestage increases at 7am for daily progression.

 

[Byteblazar]

This is perfect then, it has bugged me since 2016 that I couldn't change the time night time begins. Trader times are easy to change, plus I mostly don't use them personally.

Same, except I started playing this game only a few years ago. I think I will add an optional patch to adjust trader times dynamically for those who use them though.

Edit: actually, I might release it as a separate mod, since it's something others might want even if they don't use this mod.

An small side note. Gamestage is calculated using DaysAlive which ticks over at 7am not 6am. So gamestage increases at 7am for daily progression.

Right, because the game always starts at 7am and it calculates based on that instead. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[GigglingZombie]

I've been using this mod for a couple of days. Just with MilkyWayGalaxy for now. Very nice, and (so far) it plays well with all my other mods. Thanks !