Zodiac calendar system

[Sheriziya (Ilse MJ)]

Hi,

My world has a zodiac calendar system with eras each of 12 years. The complete cycle is 48 years, because it is also linked to the elements. I would like this automatically continue to present day. I noticed however, the last Era’s duration can’t be set (or I’m missing it somewhere).

Also, I have a moment in time like BC and AD. The Zodiac calendar starts at the switch point from BC to AD. Before that I don’t have these eras.

Essentially I have:
← BC
Switch Point
→ AD Era 1 “Era of Water”, AD Era 2 “Era of Fire”, AD Era 3 “Era of Wood”, AD Era 4 “Era of Air”, AD Era 5 “Era of Water”, etc up until and including the current day in the story and beyond of course.

How can I best achieve this?

ETA: I’ve figured out that piece. Now I have one question left:
Is there a way to name the years? Like The Year of the Dragon, etc.
So, I have Eras which each have a duration of 12 years. Each year is represented by a Zodiac sign. It would be extremely helpful if I could fill that in somewhere and that the system would automatically calculate that for me, instead of me having to do this in a spreadsheet and later having to check the spreadsheet.

Thanks for the help!

[Peter_T]

So what you need are recurring periods of time above the years. As long as Aeon does not offer a setting option for this in the calendar settings, I am afraid one will have to resort to a makeshift solution.

My approach is to declare each individual Zodiac year as an era, and to include the era count and element in the year’s name. This allows to create a project template with the help of a script that inserts the Zodiac years into the calendar as eras.

So that there are not thousands of eras, I have restricted the Zodiac range in my experimental set-up.
The result for Aeon Timeline 2 looks like this:

However, this method has one disadvantage: leap days are lost, as each era only has one year, so the leap year count never gets going.

If you want, you can download my Aeon 2 test project and see whether you can load and convert it with Aeon Timeline 3.

[Sheriziya (Ilse MJ)]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your suggestion! I made my test setup slightly different. I made the Eras 12 years (that means the zodiac signs per year aren’t included in the timeline). That makes it a bit easier for me, as I have the history from the Year 1 mark also included, but my story starts almost 1000 years later. I need the information from those first 1000 years also available in my timeline.
Now I “only” need to make about 80 eras

This is what it looks for me.

Displaying the months in the years (for some reason it only shows the abbreviation instead of the full month name)

While working with this I found it would be extremely helpful if we could at least also have an abbreviation in front of the year number in custom calendars.
Right now it shows M1 1 Era 1 Water
It took me a while to figure that the bolded 1 is actually the year number.
This would be handier:
M1 Y1 Era name (since the full era name is displayed in this case)

Ideally it would show:
M1 Year name Era name Or something like that. In that way you could more easily see the zodiac year you’re in, without having to look it up elsewhere. I now have an excel sheet with all the eras and the corresponding zodiac years, so that I can figure out in which zodiac year something happens.

[Peter_T]

@Sheriziya

I made the Eras 12 years

Well, you already explained that in your first post. I actually thought you were talking about seeing the years in the timeline, with the zodiac signs as names.

In the meantime, I have slightly revised my tool, and now it generates a thousand “years”, starting with 1. I notice that Aeon Timeline 2 has no problems with such a calendar.
This is how the updated sample project looks like:

I would be interested to know whether this sample project can also be loaded with Aeon Timeline 3, but unfortunately I can’t try it out myself because I don’t have this version. Wouldn’t you like to give it a try?

@Sheriziya

Displaying the months in the years (for some reason it only shows the abbreviation instead of the full month name)

I can’t explain why the months are displayed as prefixed numbers in your screenshot. Didn’t you assign any month names?

@Sheriziya

It took me a while to figure that the bolded 1 is actually the year number.

Yes, that cannot be suppressed. In my system, every “year” is preceded by a “one”.

Cheers,
Peter

[Sheriziya (Ilse MJ)]

@Peter_T

Well, you already explained that in your first post. I actually thought you were talking about seeing the years in the timeline, with the zodiac signs as names.

Ah, yes. I see the confusion
Ideally I want both:
Have the eras of 12 years and there names AND the name of the year. For now I’ll need to use a spreadsheet for the latter

@Peter_T

I would be interested to know whether this sample project can also be loaded with Aeon Timeline 3, but unfortunately I can’t try it out myself because I don’t have this version. Wouldn’t you like to give it a try?

I will give it a try later today

@Peter_T

I can’t explain why the months are displayed as prefixed numbers in your screenshot. Didn’t you assign any month names?

Each month has a name. They’re really simple:
One with abbrevation M1
Two M2
etc.

@Peter_T

Yes, that cannot be suppressed. In my system, every “year” is preceded by a “one”.

Ah, good to know. Thanks!

Thanks for answering all my questions so far!

Regards,
ilse

[Peter_T]

@Sheriziya

Ideally I want both:
Have the eras of 12 years and there names AND the name of the year.

That’s not possible with Aeon 3, I’m afraid. If I’m not mistaken, the only way to give years names is to redefine eras as years.
But because you can’t enter a large number of eras via Aeon’s user interface, I wrote a utility program that defines these eras and enters them into any Aeon template.
Yesterday I tried it with Aeon Timeline 2, and it works perfectly.

I then created a timeline project from the generated Aeon 2 template, which I offer for download above. To try out the Zodiac calendar, you would have to import this project into Aeon 3. Aeon 3 should be able to read and convert this sample project, but it will probably not include some of the new features of Aeon 3, such as the narrative.

For full support of Aeon 3 it would be necessary to enter the Zodiac “years” into an Aeon 3 template.
Today I wrote a modified program that should work for Aeon 3 templates. However, I can’t try it out because, as I said, I no longer have Aeon 3.

Cheers,
Peter

[Sheriziya (Ilse MJ)]

@Peter_T

Aeon 3 should be able to read and convert this sample project, but it will probably not include some of the new features of Aeon 3, such as the narrative.

I just opened it with Aeon Timeline 3. It opens perfectly and the Narrative option is also there.

The only thing I noticed is that number 1 in front of it all.

It’s not logical if that’s the number of the year, because as you can see in the screenshot, there are multiple years covered, and each has the number 1 at the beginning.
Or is that the number of the month?

With your program it’s indeed possible. Although I have completely different zodiac signs, the concept does work. It would be ideal if this were integrated in Aeon in a similar way as we can adjust the names of the months and eras and add/delete , and such. Perhaps it’s something for the suggestions forum?

I’ve just posted a feature suggestion for this and tagged you in it and made a link to this topic as well

[Peter_T]

It’s great that we’ve come a little closer to the desired result. I notice that AT3 shows the long names of the eras in the top bar; in AT2, as you can see in my screenshots, it’s the short names with the zodiac signs.

At this point, to avoid confusion, we need to clarify once again that “era” has a double meaning here: first, the 12-year era of your calendar definition (let’s call it the “Zodiac era”), and second, the era under the hood of Aeon Timeline (let’s call it the “Aeon era”).

@Sheriziya

It’s not logical if that’s the number of the year, because as you can see in the screenshot, there are multiple years covered, and each has the number 1 at the beginning.

Aeon always displays the year from the beginning of the current Aeon era. However, because each Aeon era has exactly one year in our calendar, you will always see “one” as the year, as mentioned in an earlier post. You should simply disregard this.

@Sheriziya

Although I have completely different zodiac signs, the concept does work.

If your zodiac signs are included in the UTF character set, I can adapt my program and create a customized template for you.

@Sheriziya

I’ve just posted a feature suggestion for this

I don’t want to appear pessimistic, but I can’t imagine that such a concept will ever be supported by the software. It differs fundamentally from the way Aeon performs date calculations internally.
But who knows …

[Sheriziya (Ilse MJ)]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for all your help so far! I have a few questions left

@Peter_T

At this point, to avoid confusion, we need to clarify once again that “era” has a double meaning here: first, the 12-year era of your calendar definition (let’s call it the “Zodiac era”), and second, the era under the hood of Aeon Timeline (let’s call it the “Aeon era”).

What, to you, is the difference between my 12-year eras and Aeon’s eras?

@Peter_T

Aeon always displays the year from the beginning of the current Aeon era. However, because each Aeon era has exactly one year in our calendar, you will always see “one” as the year, as mentioned in an earlier post. You should simply disregard this.

Ah, that way. I think in this case for me the 12 year eras are more important than each year, because each year starting at 1 confuses me. I’ve been trying it out yesterday after my post here, hence I have a bit new insight now. Perhaps my Post-COVID brain isn’t making complete sense of it all yet. I have problems with that.

@Peter_T

I don’t want to appear pessimistic, but I can’t imagine that such a concept will ever be supported by the software. It differs fundamentally from the way Aeon performs date calculations internally.
But who knows …

Indeed I thought it could never hurt to ask If I don’t ask I know for sure the feature won’t be implemented

Thanks again for all your help.

[Peter_T]

@Sheriziya

Perhaps my Post-COVID brain isn’t making complete sense of it all yet. I have problems with that.

Oh my! I know what it’s like, COVID finally got me during the last NaNoWriMo, and at the beginning of this year I had a hard time for months.

So let’s think about it once again:

1. We need named Zodiac years, but the only way Aeon displays years is by numbering.
2. A way to enter names into the calendar is provided by the Aeon eras.
3. So we define Aeon eras, one for each Zodiac year.
4. Each Aeon era has one Aeon year.
5. The Aeon year is automatically named “1”.
6. The corresponding Zodiac year is represented by the Aeon era’s name.

All clear until then?

Next, we need 12-year Zodiac eras. The trick is, to simply include their names with the Zodiac years’ names so that they appear in the calendar.

However, Aeon doesn’t know about the Zodiac eras. They appear to the user due to a name convention, that’s all.

You can see that if you open Aeon’s calendar settings (you may have to delete the events before). There are 1002 Aeon eras, 1000 of them last only one year.

To repeat once again: This is a workaround. The fact that a “1” is displayed for every year in the calendar is the price you pay. But otherwise it works quite well, doesn’t it?

Cheers,
Peter

[Peter_T]

@Sheriziya

I think in this case for me the 12 year eras are more important than each year

Then, of course, things are much easier. It’s just a matter of creating a corresponding number of eras (in this case, the Aeon era and the Zodiac era are one and the same).

I have quickly created an Aeon 2 project with 98 eras of 12 years for you.
Enjoy!

[Sheriziya (Ilse MJ)]

Thank you so much! Your help is truly great!

[Sheriziya (Ilse MJ)]

I’m sorry to hear COVID got you as well! It’s good to hear you’ve recovered!
I was recovering quite good last year, but I fell in the trap of stress vs Post-COVID. For a few months everything went well, but then the stress fell away… and with that Post-COVID hit back hard. So… now I’m 100% at home, instead of working.

But enough of that. I think it’s starting to make sense with the way you listed it out. For now, though, I feel the 12-year era of your Aeon 2 template is still more understandable for me I’ll just keep the spreadsheet at hand for more detailed information

Thanks again for all your help!

[Peter_T]

Well, I wish you a speedy recovery then.
By now you would be an expert on Aeon Timeline eras, wouldn’t you?

Cheers,
Peter