Tick-based game
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A tick is a unit or measurement of time used in games. Predominantly found in browser based MMORPGs, a tick can be any measurement of real time, from seconds to days or even months.
Not to be confused with a game round, a tick is the iterated time period upon which all important actions in a game take place.
Tick based games differ from turn-based game in that a tick will always happen after the same period of time whereas a turn can be stored and used later. This difference may seem insignificant at first, but it's a vital commodity to most MMORPGs. It means that players cannot store up large amounts of turns to perform in one go.
The most common tick period is one hour. This means that each and every hour certain important functions and actions take place for everyone playing the game (i.e. update the amount of cash a player has, how much power is being generated by power-plants or a characters' level, etc). Anything faster than 10 minutes is generally considered a speed round or chaos round, which puts more strain on the server hosting the game, but is considered more fun for the players.
