Time & Subdivisions

MythTapestry tracks time within a day separately from the calendar date. This page explains how to define your world’s time system — whether that’s a standard 24-hour clock, a nautical watch system, or something entirely original — and how time displays in the app.

Subdivision scales

Time within a day is defined using subdivision scales — a special type of temporal scale that works inside a single day rather than across days or years. Each subdivision scale has a name, and you specify how many of it fit into its parent.

Property	Description
Name	What you call this unit (e.g. “Hour”, “Bell”, “Deciday”, “Watch”)
Units per parent	How many of this unit fit into one parent unit (e.g. 24 hours per day, 60 minutes per hour)
Parent scale	The scale this one sits beneath (the top-level subdivision’s parent is the day itself)

You can nest as many levels as you need. The structure is entirely up to you.

Example: Standard clock time

Hour — 24 per day
  └── Minute — 60 per hour
        └── Second — 60 per minute

Example: Fantasy bell system

Bell — 8 per day  (each bell = 3 hours)
  └── Quarter — 4 per bell  (each quarter = 45 minutes)

Example: Decimal time

Deciday — 10 per day
  └── Centidecday — 100 per deciday

Any structure works — just specify the name and how many fit in the parent at each level.

Tip

You do not need to define subdivision scales at all. If your calendar has none, the time picker is hidden and all dates are day-level only. Add subdivisions only if your world actually tracks time within a day.

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The time picker

When you edit a date field that supports time, expand the Time section in the date picker. It shows one input field per subdivision scale, ordered from the largest unit to the smallest. Fill in the values at each level and confirm — MythTapestry handles the conversion.

If you leave all the time fields empty, no time of day is recorded and the date is treated as day-only.

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How time displays

When a stored time is shown in the UI, MythTapestry converts it back to your calendar’s subdivision levels and displays them joined with :.

For a standard calendar this looks like 14:30:00. For a bell system it might display as 4:2 (bell 4, quarter 2). The display reflects whatever subdivisions you have defined — nothing is hardcoded as hours, minutes, or seconds.

If a calendar has no subdivision scales defined, the time picker is hidden entirely.

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Format strings for time

Format strings work with subdivision scales using the same {ScaleName:formatter} syntax as date formatting. See Creating Calendars for the full token reference.

Example — standard 24-hour time:

{Hour:value:02}:{Minute:value:02}

Displays as: 14:30

Example — date and time together:

{Month:unit} {Day:day_ord}, {Year:value} at {Hour:value:02}:{Minute:value:02}

Displays as: January 15th, 2024 at 14:30

The padding :02 ensures single-digit values display with a leading zero (09 instead of 9).

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Custom time system examples

Watches at sea

A nautical fantasy world might track time in watches:

Watch — 4 per day
  └── Glass — 8 per watch  (~30 minutes each)

This gives timestamps like “3rd glass of the morning watch” — fully supported with the same date picker and display as any other time system.

Imperial decimal beats

A world with decimal calendars might pair them with decimal time:

Beat — 10 per day  (each beat = 2.4 standard hours)
  └── Microbeat — 1000 per beat  (~8.64 seconds each)

Single-level time

If your world only needs broad time-of-day references with no finer divisions:

Bell — 12 per day

The picker shows one field. The display shows a single number.