How will aging of people work?

[UncasualGames]

Hi Noble, nice to see you around here

@NobleRambler

I think the best way to satisfy most would be an option to choose how many years the population ages per game year, say a range of 1 to 5 years per cycle. This way a year (4-season cycle) can still be long enough to satisfy, but the player can choose how much age progression occurs based on their patience level and attention span.

We have something like this in our minds.
Still need to try it in the game and see how it works. Right now years are long, but I would like then even a bit longer, so you can really have that “winter is coming” feeling or running out of supplies and praying for an early spring.
That means that a year cant be a year if we want to play with different generations.

@NobleRambler

Adding to this, I’d like to see this type of setting replace the concept of “speeding up the game.” Rather than hit 10-speed and little tribals start running around the scene like they’ve all had too much sugar, how about a constant game speed altered by choosing (in the Options menu) the number of years each cycle will represent? This way the game will always be played as it was intended, with all the animations looking realistic, yet the generations can go by at the pace the player is comfortable.

The game works with xN speeds, though. Playing every day at real time can take a while only watching people walking and doing stuff. Real time IS real time and it would end being boring. Of course nobody forces you to speed up, so you can go real time if you want. But we are building fast speed in a way that it feels like those beautiful and relaxing time lapses videos where you look the clouds shadows and lighting changing along the day. That’s the goal, and that is why we are embracing the day night cycle too. Let’s see how much we can move towards that goal for the first release.