Help with Calendar and Moon Phase Generator

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Post by Blackrazor » Wed Jul 16, 2014 4:23 pm

Help with Calendar and Moon Phase Generator

Waysoftheearth you are a knowledgeable coder and mathematician. I was wondering if you would undertake a task to create a calendar and moon phase online generator.

Something that does not exist for free, nor online anymore.

You can buy them or download them, but not use them like an online generator.

So the tool would create a calendar for planet X, with a Y rotational period and. Z orbital period around a sun. It would allow for multiple moos to zip around the planet and calculate their phases.

So planet Dinglebat has a rotational period of 43 hours and orbits it's sun every 467 days, it's moons all 4 have orbital periods of 4 days, 16 days, 56 days and 567 days respectively.

A week wpuld be a variable with Q number of days with Z number of weeks composing a month.

Could you wait, I know you can. Would you consider doing this.

Then later you can add vwather generator :)

I look forward to your reply.

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Post by waysoftheearth » Thu Jul 17, 2014 3:22 am

Re: Help with Calendar and Moon Phase Generator

Hey Blackrazor,

(I edited your OP title to open it up to all comers--more chance of success I think).

I'm not a proper mathematician by any stretch, but there are a few folks on the odd74 board who are. Aher and Krusader74 come immediately to mind, and there are likely a few others too.

If I understand your description, I think the kind of thing you're after would be relatively easy to write. It's basically just outputting a long series of "local days", reporting the phase of each moon for that day, based on a uniform, repeating cycle.

A challenge with it, however, will be that such a calendar is effectively infinitely long.

You'd need to decide (among other things):

a) Where the planet and its moons start. I.e., what state is the universe in at "time zero"?
b) What period/how much of the calendar are you interested in? One (local) Month? Ten (local) years? A million (local) years? Starting from when?
c) What celestial "events" do you want it to report? Every single moon phase of every night? Full/New moons? Lunar and solar eclipses? Conjunctions? Meteors? Other stuff?

I can help out at the "suggestions" level but I haven't got time to build it myself--I'm already way overloaded as it is!

It's an interesting project though, I'll be interested to see where it goes...
[f=32]Golgildir the Elf Medium (MV 12", AC 9, HD 1, hp 1/1, AL N) great cloak, lantern; spells: color spray; scrolls: sleep, sleep, charm person
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Post by ehiker133 » Thu Jul 17, 2014 3:44 am

Re: Help with Calendar and Moon Phase Generator

I did a google search for "RPG calendar generator" and came up with one that appear to be free...

http://www.habitualindolence.net/masterplan/
[f=47]Dougal Blackfoot (MV 9", AC 6, Lvl 4, HP 10/10) [/f]
[f=59]Goldwen (Sagacious* Abbess, MV 9′′, AC 6, HD 2+1, HP 9, FC 2 men, SV C3, L][/f]

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Post by Blackrazor » Fri Jul 18, 2014 3:04 am

Re: Help with Calendar and Moon Phase Generator

Yeah, I checked that before I made the original post. Thanks for looking and helping, I am really thankful. T is cool when folks help. I do not have a PC sadly so it is useless to me :(. That's why I was looking for someone to create an online generator.

Looks cool, if I ever get a PC, I will use it for sure. Thanks a bunch again for helping. :)

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