[JASS] Get Real World Date System

[xorkatoss]

Hello everybody,

I'm interested in implementing daily rewards/quests in my RPG map, like Runescape/mobile games etc.

I want to know if there is a Jass Native to get the current real world date (from b.net server maybe?), obviously this won't work if you are offline.
This was asked before. But Lua is a no.

Alternative is to just have one-time quests every game but that can be abused by doing a lot of remakes.

 

[Nichilus]

I don't think there is any way to do that in jass. Jass was created specifically for wc3, so I imagine the devs just put in the stuff they needed. On the other hand lua is a general purpose scripting language, which is why you can (probably) do that.

I don't know what map you are making, nor your target audience, but perhaps you should rethink using datetimes in multiplayer map that will be played over the course of multiple days, unless you are prepared to handle stuff like time zones, people changing their own local time, etc.

 

[Kakerate]

unless you are prepared to handle stuff like time zones, people changing their own local time, etc.

changing my gamecube's time and logging into Animal Crossing with all the christmas gifts awaiting me felt like a lifehack.

 

[xorkatoss]

@Nichilus well this is sad, IF it was possible to get the b.net server time then there wouldn't even be a reason to check for all of that, you just check if his last logged in day and his current log in day is different lol

@Kakerate haha yes I mostly did this in Tribez and other android games

 

[Nichilus]

Well, lua has some libraries that allow you to send http requests, so you could send http request to some trusted site that will return you the datetime, but I imagine that such libraries will be blocked in warcraft as that could potentially be a security issue.

Is the map just for you and your friends (for example for lan party)? If so, maybe you don't even need to check date time, instead it could work if you had trusted host for the map who would have access to some specific commands through which they could 'end the day', resetting dailies to other players

 

[Uncle]

Lua allows you to get the date/time. You could use a save/load system to compare the current date to your last save files recorded date to determine how much time has passed since then. Also, Lua is way better than Jass, and things like WCSharp (C# -> Lua) make it even better.

 

[Nichilus]

Well, it depends on who is t he host, right? I can't say I have much experience with continued multiplayer games, but if the host of the game can change, then it is an issue. Imagine one player being in UTC+5 timezone, while other being in UTC-2 timezone, etc.
The author could only check UTC time, which would be semi-universal but then daily reset for player A would be for example at 3 am while for player B it would be 9 am.

Personally, I am not that proficient with lua, but a quick search yielded os.date() which is used to to get current date time, which just seems to take user's local date time, so changing date time could completely circumvent what xorkatoss is trying to atchieve.

 

[xorkatoss]

@Uncle yes problem is I don't want to lean lua lol, even learning some basic jass was a hassle I don't want to repeat.

@Nichilus well no point in discussing this any further but for the sake of ending this conversation, IF it possible to get server b.net time I would just choose the Europe server time and the other regions would have to just deal with it lol.

thank you all for helping me!

 

[Uncle]

@Uncle yes problem is I don't want to lean lua lol, even learning some basic jass was a hassle I don't want to repeat.

@Nichilus well no point in discussing this any further but for the sake of ending this conversation, IF it possible to get server b.net time I would just choose the Europe server time and the other regions would have to just deal with it lol.

thank you all for helping me!

I understand, but note that they use the same API so it's really not that different. I learned Lua first and by learning it I was able to understand Jass MUCH quicker - It's basically the same thing with a few rule changes (that users on Hive have documented). The nice thing about Lua is it often does what Jass does with less effort. For example:

function MyNewFunction takes unit u returns integer i
    local integer i = GetUnitTypeId(u)
    call KillUnit(u)
    return i
endfunction

function MyNewFunction(u)
    local i = GetUnitTypeId(u)
    KillUnit(u)
    return i
end

Look at the Lua function, it's doing the same thing without needing a bunch of extra fluff like "takes unit", "returns integer", "call", "set", etc.

 

[Dr Super Good]

JASS does not support what you are after.

Lua used to in early versions of Reforged. However it was desync prone due to the returned time value being different for every computer.

 

[Wrda]

Which is why you have to sync first.

 

[HerlySQR]

It would be funny to opt setting the language to Lua to be able to use the os.date function and start and ending all scripts with //! endusercode and //! beginusercode just to keep using Jass.