Metric time

From Toadwater Guide

Instead of the conventional 24 hour time system, Toadwater uses metric time. The system is in fact a genuine one which is used minimally elsewhere, and you can read up on it [this wikipedia article].

Metric time is based on factors of 10, and thus a day is seperated into 10 large units, which are each seperated into a further 10 smaller units, and so on. These intervals loosely correspond to standard time intervals, but of course have different durations.

Contents 1 Definitions 2 From Standard to Metric 3 Writing Metric Time 4 Ingame Time

Definitions

Because metric time uses completely different time intervals, each of them has an invented name which can cause some confusion at first, but once you get used to it metric time is a very logical system and has many advantages over standard time.

The most common of these units you will probably come across is the diddy, also known as the metric hour. A diddy lasts for 1/10th of a day. The other time units are as follows:

Unit Name	Alternative Names	Diddies	Standard Equivalent
Decajour	Metric Week, Dekajour	100	10 Days
Jour	Metric Day	10	1 Day
Diddy	Metric Hour	1	2.4 Hours, or 144 Minutes
Milli	Metric Minute	0.01	1.44 Minutes, or 86.4 Seconds
Lac	Metric Seconds	0.0001	0.864 Seconds

Metric years are the same length as standard years, however metric time in toadwater begins counting from January 1st, 1670, so the year 2000 in standard time is the year 330 in metric time. This means that a metric year is equivalent to a standard year minus 1670, or similarly a standard year is a metric year plus 1670.

From Standard to Metric

From the definitions of metric time units, it is quite easy to convert metric time into standard time, but the other direction can be a little more tricky. Here is a conversion table to make the process easier:

Time Unit	Metric Equivalent
Year	1 Metric year, or 36.5 Decajours, or 365 Jours
Week	0.7 Decajours, or 7 Jours
Day	1 Jour, or 10 Diddies
Hour	Roughly 0.417 Diddies, or 41.7 Millis
Minute	Roughly 0.7 Millis, or 41.7 Lacs
Second	Roughly 1.18 Lacs

Writing Metric Time

Metric time written out in full contains each unit from the largest to the smallest in order. It will look something like this: (338-00-9) 5:55:53

The first thing we should note is that metric times begin at zero, not one. So they either run from 0-9 (for Jours and Diddies), or from 00-99 (for Decajours, Millis and Lacs). The metric year of course will continue indefinately, just like standard years.

The first three numbers in the brackets give us the date, starting with the metric year (which as explained previously is equivalent to a standard year minus 1670). The second number is the Decajour (metric week), and the third is the Jour (metric day). In our example it is the tenth (because metric times begin at zero) Jour of the first Decajour of the metric year 338.

The second three numbers outside of the brackets are the metric time. First is the Diddy (metric hour), then the Milli (metric minute), and finally the last number is the Lac (metric second). So the time of day is the 54th lac of the 56th milli of the 6th diddy.

One final thing should be said about metric time at this point; there are no timezones. The simplest way to figure out what the metric time is is to compare it to GMT. At midnight GMT, it will be 5:00:00 metric time, and at midday GMT, it will be 0:00:00 metric time.

Ingame Time

Objects in the game will age faster than real time. In one day, an object will age 100 ingame days, and 365 ingame days are always equal to one ingame year (there are no leap years!).

This means that ingame days correlate very nicely with metric time.

In Game Time	Metric Equivalent	Standard Equivalent
1 Year	36.5 Jours	87.6 Hours (3.65 Days)
100 Days	1 Jour	24 Hours
10 Days	1 Diddy	144 Minutes
1 Day	10 Millis	14.4 Minutes (864 Seconds)

There is one exception to this, which is that you characters age, which is listed in the Info Center. See age for more info.