Sanity meter (and hallucinations)

[RolleZ]

Imagine that you live months in ice cold envivorment, you face death every day and you watch wolves in their eyes. At nights, you could hear bears crowling through the wall in your cabin as you try to sleep

Thats not a place where your thinking stays pristine. You would go crazy if you didnt have chores to do, things to fiddle with and fun between the constant death and struggling to stay alive.

My idea: Sanity meter

Sanity would slowly decrease, it would take a full week to go from 100% sanity to 0 sanity, after being under 10% sanity for too long you would go crazy which would be very, very hard to cure.

Sanity would be increased with learning to play piano or guitar, playing with matches, building things, repairing things, killing deers, moving from place to another... You could stop sanity developement for a day with mental pill, sanity would simply not move to negative or positive, however too much sanity pills for too long would end in sanity crash as you finally get out of pills

Sanity would decrease by hunger, blistering cold, time, resting for way too long or resting repeatedly. You know, its not the most pleasant thing to do to roll around your bed trying to sleep right after you woke up for 4 hours. We know this because sometimes we struggle to sleep when we are batshit tired

It would be nice to bring sanity in alpha, and after developement we could have hallucinations in the future so sanity would actually do something. Just like how the food poisoning was developed, first there was quality of food and after some time there was food poisoning and not both of them at the same time.

Hallucinations would start developing after your sanity meter is on <75%, it would be small things like hearing sudden crack on a tree and fiddling a little bit with your thirstyness and hunger (5-10% of your food and water would "go to waste")

<50% Sanity things would get a bit more intresting, you would see a bunny run in the snow and disappearing, you wake up at night thinking there was a loud bang somewhere, your hunger and thirstyness would get even more fucked up. You drop your stuff randomly

<25% Sanity you feel sudden colds, sudden warmths, you feel the need to take off your clothes in a storm, you hear people saying words to you in middle of nowhere, you suddenly pour a bottle of water in your fire because why not, wasting a liter of good water, you can hear steps and cracks in houses

Insanity, after hitting <0% and not going above 10% for certain time

Now this is where things would get intresting. You would see people from your past, you hear piano playing in houses and sleeping in houses causes you to wake up in sleep paralysis, as you see people you think could have lived in that house, you would hear children giggleing, you would hear "Pack of donuts, thats 2.25, is that on debit or cash?" as you build things with your shaking hands.

Is this idea a bit too R-rated? Maybe the hallucination part, but sanity would be a very big improvement to the pace of the game

[selfless]

When I was starting, I thought I was seeing shadows of deer when walking through blizzards and thought "Wow, that's an awesome effect. Rendering things that aren't there to play with my visual conceptions. It'd be awesome to see that more and more as I got hungrier and hungrier. Maybe I'll see ghost wolves, too, if I get scared-er." Now I know that those really were deer. Nothing contrived about it, just chance encounter. I miss my early conceptions.

[piddy3825]

Imagine that you live months in ice cold environment, you face death every day and you watch wolves in their eyes. At nights, you could hear bears crowling through the wall in your cabin as you try to sleep

Thats not a place where your thinking stays pristine. You would go crazy if you didnt have chores to do, things to fiddle with and fun between the constant death and struggling to stay alive.

They don't call it cabin fever or stir crazy for nothing. When I first started playing the game prior to the DP map, I seem to recall that there were lots of noises that woke the character up at night. Game doesn't seem to do that at all anymore. I for one started hoarding books instead of burning them, hoping that one day I will get to read those books to pass the time and retain my "sanity" instead of having to sleep away 12 hours to 24 hours waiting for the weather to improve. They could really tie in your sanity meter idea if the character couldn't sleep because he wasn't tired, just like you cant make him drink or eat if he isn't hungry or thirsty. If you have nothing to do, you would just lay there listening to every creak and groan that your shelter makes, the endless whistling of the wind. I can just image how loud an endless water drip can get, enough to drive you crazy... :twisted:

[JErosion]

Punish Players who hibernate with Bedsores,

[RolleZ]

Punish Players who hibernate with Bedsores,

I was thinking more about better gaming experience than punishing. Of course it would punish someone who sleeps and eats rabbits

[Muk_Pile]

+1 to sanity meter

+1 to hallucinations caused by low stats:

• Low Sanity = ghosts of humans and whispers
  
• Low Hunger = ghosts of deer and rabbits
  
• Low Thirst = water bottles and watery canned goods
  
• Low Warmth = fires and warm clothing
  
• Low Stamina = beds, bed rolls, pillows, and furniture
  
• Multiple Low Stats = random and illogical actions (e.g. while freezing and insane, dumps a bottle of water onto a fire), rejection of particular items (e.g. while dehydrated and freezing, refuses to cook food until thirst is quenched), extremely rare chance of suicide

+1 for bedsores:

• Acquired after spending more than 24 hours in bed without at least 3 consecutive hours of wakefulness and activity
  
• Increases in severity by 1% every 3 minutes
  
• If left untreated for 5 hours, infection sets in at 40% - 60% (functions similarly to an infection caused by a wolf bite)
  
• Cured by applying 1 bandage, then remaining active and awake for at least 3 consecutive hours