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About this mod
Medieval understanding of time was very different from ours. A clock in the beginning of the 15th century was a very sophisticated hi-tech device not available for ordinary people. This mod removes numbers from the clock display for more immersion and challenge. More in the details.
Updated for and tested with the game version 1.9.5.
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Idea
I was very surprised that nobody has considered this before. While there are several very beautiful clock mods, they aim to improve the look of the clock, but they don't change the concept of it. In the Middle Ages, the understanding of time was very different from ours. People did not comprehend time as an abstract and objective, standalone so to say, entity. Instead, time was understood as a real and substantial thing, inseparable from people and events in their lives. For a common man, and by common I mean not a cleric, time was not thought of as divided into equal and discrete portions like hours, minutes, and seconds. It was tied to things like sunrise and sunset in the nearest perspective, in the medium perspective to things like first snowfall and first green leaves, common church holidays, or for a peasant to the sowing time and harvest time. And the sowing time was determined by the condition of the soil, which, in turn, was determined by the character of weather in the spring, so it could start earlier or later during a year. In the long perspective time was judged by people born and died, by kings, bishops or popes come and go. As you see, these time intervals are never equal, never constant. They could vary between several hours for a day, from several weeks to several months during a year, for couple of years to decades during a lifetime.
In the beginning of the 15th century, when the game is set, a mechanical clock is a pinnacle of technology, the newest and highly sophisticated invention. It was like the next nVidia graphics card series nowadays: everyone has heard about it, but only few have it. A mechanical clock was invented in a monastery to help monks judge when to start a service. So it was thought to be necessary only for monks, worldly people would even struggle to find any use for it. Some of them like craftsmen used a sandglass to help them judge short time intervals, but the time interval was, again, determined by the nature of the process being controlled, not by abstract units.
Even in the monasteries of the time, first clocks didn't have even a minute hand, not to say about a second hand. And even hours had a different concept than nowadays. A day was thought to be divided into 24 hours, 12 hours for the light time and 12 for the dark time. But the light time length changes throughout the year, so they adjusted the length of the hour! A summer hour was longer than a winter hour and their clocks had a mechanism to account for this. See, how important this is: the light itself determined their time units, not vice versa!
I hope you are getting where it's going and, if you are a real medieval enthusiast, understand why this mod can bring more immersion to your gameplay.
Highlights
Optional Versions
Suggested by EkErilaz, the first optional version has the canonical hours marked on the clock face. The church canonical hours were served at dawn ("Lauds"/"Prime", roughly at 5-6 a.m.), then at the third hour from dawn ("Terce", 9 a.m.), at the sixth hour ("Sext", at 12:00), at the ninth hour ("None", at 3 p.m.), and at the sunset ("Compline", at about 9 p.m.). The Lauds/Prime, the Sext, and the Compline have already been marked, I added the Terce and the None.
Another optional version which demonstrates the Roman timekeeping concept, suggested and made by EkErilaz, has the canonical hours marked in Latin on the clock face as well as the 12 hours of daytime and nighttime (of varying length) with Roman numerals. In addition, the Sasau Cloister 'Everyday labours' is now consistent with the clock: the events are now tied to the canonical hours instead of day hours. The eight canonical hours are marked: before dawn ("matutinum"), at first light ("laudes", roughly at 4-5 a.m.), then at the first hour ("hora prima", roughly 6 p.m.), third hour ("hora tertia", roughly 8-9 a.m.), at the sixth hour ("hora sexta", at 12:00), at the ninth hour ("hora nona", at roughly 3-4 p.m.), at the eventide ("vesperae", at about 6 p.m.), and before going to bed ("completae"). The sunrise, the zenith, and the sunset have already been marked, and the difference between night/day hours depend on these (12 hours of day from sunrise to sunset, 12 hours of night from sunset to sunrise).
Please, notice that you can have only one version installed at a time! The file naming convention should prevent simultaneous installation of several versions at a time.
Installation
Compatibility
This mod changes the clock display textures in the following files:
\Libs\UI\Textures\Time.dds
\Libs\UI\Textures\Minigames\TimeLarge.dds
It will conflict with any other clock display mod, like HD clock display.
The Sasau Cloister optional version also changes the game localisation files, but since version 1.9.5 it only edits the individual rows relevant to the monastery schedule, meaning it doesn't conflict with other mods that change the localisation files.
Hint/cheat
When you hover over the time arch in the inventory, it tells you the exact time.
I was very surprised that nobody has considered this before. While there are several very beautiful clock mods, they aim to improve the look of the clock, but they don't change the concept of it. In the Middle Ages, the understanding of time was very different from ours. People did not comprehend time as an abstract and objective, standalone so to say, entity. Instead, time was understood as a real and substantial thing, inseparable from people and events in their lives. For a common man, and by common I mean not a cleric, time was not thought of as divided into equal and discrete portions like hours, minutes, and seconds. It was tied to things like sunrise and sunset in the nearest perspective, in the medium perspective to things like first snowfall and first green leaves, common church holidays, or for a peasant to the sowing time and harvest time. And the sowing time was determined by the condition of the soil, which, in turn, was determined by the character of weather in the spring, so it could start earlier or later during a year. In the long perspective time was judged by people born and died, by kings, bishops or popes come and go. As you see, these time intervals are never equal, never constant. They could vary between several hours for a day, from several weeks to several months during a year, for couple of years to decades during a lifetime.
In the beginning of the 15th century, when the game is set, a mechanical clock is a pinnacle of technology, the newest and highly sophisticated invention. It was like the next nVidia graphics card series nowadays: everyone has heard about it, but only few have it. A mechanical clock was invented in a monastery to help monks judge when to start a service. So it was thought to be necessary only for monks, worldly people would even struggle to find any use for it. Some of them like craftsmen used a sandglass to help them judge short time intervals, but the time interval was, again, determined by the nature of the process being controlled, not by abstract units.
Even in the monasteries of the time, first clocks didn't have even a minute hand, not to say about a second hand. And even hours had a different concept than nowadays. A day was thought to be divided into 24 hours, 12 hours for the light time and 12 for the dark time. But the light time length changes throughout the year, so they adjusted the length of the hour! A summer hour was longer than a winter hour and their clocks had a mechanism to account for this. See, how important this is: the light itself determined their time units, not vice versa!
I hope you are getting where it's going and, if you are a real medieval enthusiast, understand why this mod can bring more immersion to your gameplay.
Highlights
- Numbers are removed from all clock displays: waiting (skipping time), sleeping, inventory, and fast travel.
- Determine time by church bell tolls, position of the Sun in the sky and by daily events as in the Middle Ages.
- Have an additional challenge when precise time judgement is required, for example, in the monastery.
- You can still judge time intervals while waiting or sleeping, you can use the colouring of the clock face to determine dawn and dusk, midday and midnight.
Optional Versions
Suggested by EkErilaz, the first optional version has the canonical hours marked on the clock face. The church canonical hours were served at dawn ("Lauds"/"Prime", roughly at 5-6 a.m.), then at the third hour from dawn ("Terce", 9 a.m.), at the sixth hour ("Sext", at 12:00), at the ninth hour ("None", at 3 p.m.), and at the sunset ("Compline", at about 9 p.m.). The Lauds/Prime, the Sext, and the Compline have already been marked, I added the Terce and the None.
Another optional version which demonstrates the Roman timekeeping concept, suggested and made by EkErilaz, has the canonical hours marked in Latin on the clock face as well as the 12 hours of daytime and nighttime (of varying length) with Roman numerals. In addition, the Sasau Cloister 'Everyday labours' is now consistent with the clock: the events are now tied to the canonical hours instead of day hours. The eight canonical hours are marked: before dawn ("matutinum"), at first light ("laudes", roughly at 4-5 a.m.), then at the first hour ("hora prima", roughly 6 p.m.), third hour ("hora tertia", roughly 8-9 a.m.), at the sixth hour ("hora sexta", at 12:00), at the ninth hour ("hora nona", at roughly 3-4 p.m.), at the eventide ("vesperae", at about 6 p.m.), and before going to bed ("completae"). The sunrise, the zenith, and the sunset have already been marked, and the difference between night/day hours depend on these (12 hours of day from sunrise to sunset, 12 hours of night from sunset to sunrise).
Please, notice that you can have only one version installed at a time! The file naming convention should prevent simultaneous installation of several versions at a time.
Installation
- Unpack the zip contents into your main KCD folder (usually located in \Steam\steamapps\common\).
- Run the game.
- That's it.
Compatibility
This mod changes the clock display textures in the following files:
\Libs\UI\Textures\Time.dds
\Libs\UI\Textures\Minigames\TimeLarge.dds
It will conflict with any other clock display mod, like HD clock display.
The Sasau Cloister optional version also changes the game localisation files, but since version 1.9.5 it only edits the individual rows relevant to the monastery schedule, meaning it doesn't conflict with other mods that change the localisation files.
Hint/cheat
When you hover over the time arch in the inventory, it tells you the exact time.