Zugg Software :: View topic - 3.22a

Beginner Joined: 06 Aug 2010 Posts: 11

%secs is supposed to be the number of milliseconds since midnight, according to the predefined variable reference, however it looks like this is equal to system uptime (in milliseconds) at the moment. Can it be changed back to showing milliseconds after midnight? It was a lot more useful that way.

Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:07 pm

You're right that it represents the up time. However it doesn't say it starts from midnight, it just says

Beginner Joined: 06 Aug 2010 Posts: 11

The cmud documentation also states that the time is measured starting at midnight. In any event, precision or no, I find milliseconds since midnight to be far more useful than system uptime. I, for one, would very much like to have the milliseconds-since-midnight functionality available again... perhaps change %secs back and add something like %uptime if for some reason system uptime is desired? Just an idea.

Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:25 pm

Exactly where in the documentation did you find that exactly? I've trying to find that in the documentation and don't see it myself.

The reason for the change wasn't to provide the system uptime but (if memory serves correctly) improve the accuracy of the %secs function.

What exactly are you trying to do that benefits from a midnight start?

Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 9:48 pm

Well, the %secs functionality based on midnight allowed people to calculate things during the given day rather than based on uptime. For instance, if I wanted to know what my average kill speed was during the given day, I could have used %secs based on the midnight setting instead of having to create a variable that sets %secs at midnight. While this may be an absurd script, it's an idea of how %secs based on midnight evaluation is better than uptime evaluation.

Personally, I wouldn't mind having a time reference from midnight again, even if it's a whole new function.

Charneus

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 4:31 pm

The %secs functions comes from the Windows high-precision timer, which as you noticed is the uptime and *not* the time since midnight. This cannot be changed and still retrain the high precision nature of %secs. %secs was intended for high-precision timing and not for "time of day" calculations. If you need the number of milliseconds since midnight you should be able to use the %time function to obtain that.

The advantage of using uptime for %secs is also that it never "rolls over". So when you want to time how long something takes, you can safely subtract the ending %secs from the starting %secs without ever worrying about this value being negative (which happens in zMUD if midnight occurred in the middle of the timed test).