Sega.com: Another barrier to making a global RPG is different
time zones. Please describe how Swatch's .beat system was chosen and implemented.
Yuji Naka: The way Swatch envisioned and created the .beat system
was really interesting -- creating one time for the whole Internet. And
because Sega is working with Swatch, we wanted to encourage the use of
the .beat system.
Sega.com: Were there any difficulties in implementing the .beat
system?
Yuji Naka: The .beat system that shows up on the game screen isn't
just based on the Dreamcast settings -- it's sent over from the server.
And because there are so many different servers in different time zones,
it was a bit of a pain to get all of that unified.
In the Dreamcast's case, you can't really assume that the user has set
their Dreamcast clock to the correct time. So even if their timer is off,
once they connect to the server, the server will correct their time and
sync it up with everyone else's .beat time.
If you go to the Swatch homepage, it shows the .beat time there, but that
time is based on the internal clock in your PC. So if your PC has the
wrong time, the site will show you the wrong time, too. So in that sense,
PSO's .beat timer is the most accurate!
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