[Argenguy]

OH! NO! A new countdown has started, this time at the Risen blog: http://risen.deepsilver.com/blog/pages/de/news/news.php
11 days? For what? For a new CGI teaser trailer or for the first in-game gameplay video at last? Whatever it could be, it will be great for sure.

[Larisa]

A new countdown has started

I hope this time they thought about the existence of different time zones in this world.

[Argenguy]

I hope this time they thought about the existence of different time zones in this world.

You can say that again. I'm Argentina, so there are about 4 hours more of difference between here and Germany.

[Jammer]

I hope this time they thought about the existence of different time zones in this world.

What do you mean? It doesn't matter in which time zone you are in, 11 days and 17 hours are equally away all over the world.
The problem would be if they referred to a specific point in time, saying like "1. 3. 2009 @ 12.00", then you would have to consider time zones.
A little offtopic but had to clear that one out.

[Maladiq]

What do you mean? It doesn't matter in which time zone you are in, 11 days and 17 hours are equally away all over the world.
The problem would be if they referred to a specific point in time, saying like "1. 3. 2009 @ 12.00", then you would have to consider time zones.
A little offtopic but had to clear that one out.

The last time they had a timer it restarted for everyone outside of germany until it reached 0 in germany. That mean at least one or two hours more for the rest of europe, even more for the rest of the world.

[foobar]

I hope this time they thought about the existence of different time zones in this world.

No, they did not.
If you want to know the real deadline you need to set your time zone to Germany (Europe/Berlin, GMT+1) before refreshing the site.

EDIT: The countdown will reach zero at the 2nd of March, 2009, 14:00 CET.

What do you mean? It doesn't matter in which time zone you are in, 11 days and 17 hours are equally away all over the world.

The timer shows a countdown. How is that done? By subtracting two datetimes. Appearently, they do this by showing the difference between "deadline time" and "current time" whereas the latter one is your very own PC clock - and that is usually set to your local time.

Correct would be to transfer both datetimes to a common basis, like GMT or UTC. I don't know if there's a flash function to determine the user's time zone settings. If they calculated everything on the server or used an external, well-defined time source, there'd be some lags due to packet delays and of course greater server load. The current method just gives you the SWF and everything else happens on your PC. The other method would require a constant data stream from a server to your PC. To much work for them. They would basically need to implement a NTP client to do it right.

Just set your local time to something else for a minute and refresh the site. You'll see that the countdown changes as well. That means it's based on your own PC clock.

[Jammer]

Thanks foobar for the explanation, I didn't even notice it was a swf, pardon my previous comment. As for how to solve it, I am thinking more like php and javascript
However this obviously has nothing to do with Risen being shown @ RPC so this has gotten of the hook really =)

[Zocky]

hm, but foobar, if you compare local clock on your comp with the clock on server, can the script easily tell timezone just from this difrence.
Like, if server shows 7.00am, and local 4.00am, that means it's server timezone - 3 hours, so you simply adjust the other date according to this.

That's the theory atleast. :P

[Larisa]

I'm not sure, but something like this could solve the problem:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/00001591.html

And this should be my last offtopic in this thread.

[foobar]

hm, but foobar, if you compare local clock on your comp with the clock on server, can the script easily tell timezone just from this difrence.

Hmm... you're right, I think. It's not a perfect solution but might be a sufficient workaround for this problem. In general, you might have jumps in the countdown when daylight savings are applied (time zones are not the only thing that cause time offsets between client and server) and of course, it still requires the clock to be set correctly. But if there is a way to write the current server time into the SWF and have the client compare it with his time, it can work. The target date (2nd of March) should be before any daylight savings are "activated".

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/00001591.html

That seems be to be the almost perfect solution. It takes both time zone and daylight savings into consideration and only needs a correctly set RTC. I wonder why 247 (the company who created the site) did not read the flash docs before making the countdown.

And this should be my last offtopic in this thread.

I moved this discussion to a new thread. I think this timer will be the source of quite a lot speculations and theories (that's probably the intention anyway). So we now gave it its own thread. Feel free to talk about the countdown and what might happen when it turns zero.

[catalinux]

As far as I understood the countdown is about Piranha Club's anniversary of 1 year of existence. I believe we'll see some artworks from Ralf. Or maybe the first screenshots?

[Demonium]

As far as I understood the countdown is about Piranha Club's anniversary of 1 year of existence. I believe we'll see some artworks from Ralf. Or maybe the first screenshots?

We have already seen those...i think this time we will see some ingame video...
Some presentation about graphics, dialogs, combat, story...

I only hope it will be at a high quality and not from some cheap camera recording off-screen...

[Zocky]

demonium, strictly speaking, there are no PC screenshots for public. Only those on german magazin, which we shouldn't see anyway. So we have yet to see first official screenshots.

[SlamDunk]

That countdown is only on the German site.

[foobar]

As far as I understood the countdown is about Piranha Club's anniversary of 1 year of existence.

In the german forum, there's a post from elind claiming that they already celebrated their first anniversary "this week". The post is dated from Febuary, 1st. I think elind should know best when they have their anniversary.

[Powaz]

Well Pixel mentioned something. The only thing we can do is wait. :]

[Dykunas]

Hm, some food for thought . Hope it's something more than a few measly screenshots, although those would also be appreciated .

[rotator]

Because Risen really looks like Gothic 3, I'm not that interested in watching more images or even an ingame video this time, rather I'd like to hear something about the contents of a possible CE, or an announcement about a solid release date.

[vivaxardas]

My dream: a playable demo? Just a tiny one, please, like 2-3 hours or so...

[catalinux]

My dream is c MARVIN c... F6... CTRL+arrows...
Ah... and ai goto...