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Thread: Characters never sleep

  1. #1

    Default Characters never sleep

    I'm thinking of creating a bug report with this title. Thoughts?

    My experience with roguelikes is limited to 4 or 5 games. Only one had the ability to sleep, and even that one didn't actually keep track of sleep deprivation, it was just a means to explain what happened when the character chose to wait for several hours at a time. (ADOM equivalent of w5'ing for many turns.)

    In ADOM now, the character never sleeps, for months, and there is not only no explanation or magical rationalization, but also not even one word of mention.

    Adding sleep to the game would require a lot of programming (I think) and a whole lot of adaptation from players. Cost / benefit ratio might be too high.

    I envision a sleep counter along the lines of satiation value. Different races, and perhaps different classes, would get sleepy at different rates. (Perhaps certain skills would also affect sleep somehow.) A state would be added to the summary lines at the bottom, again similar to satiation, perhaps something along the lines of "Exhausted / Sleepy / Tired / (null) / Jittery".

    Nodding off when a hostile is in line of sight would be virtually impossible for any hero, due to every humanoid's biology including some sort of adrenaline equivalent. However, there would be penalties (again, similar to satiation) to DV and Perception when Tired or worse.

    Camping in the wilderness might be relatively safe. For long dungeon crawls, people without magical means of staying awake might choose to use wands of door creation and lock themselves into a room to sleep for 8 hours.

    Etc, etc. It's a whole can of worms. Fun! Or ...?

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Sounds pretty boring tbh. :l

  3. #3
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    Technically, characters do sleep, they just need a harpy song to relax properly.

    This sounds like a fun suggestion for Adom II. For "the resurrection" it's a bit much to ask.
    You steal a scroll labelled HITME. The orc hits you.

  4. #4
    Join Date
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    While it is somewhat weird that the PC can keep on going for months without even taking a nap, introducing this would add frustration to the game (via having to backtrack to the wilderness or a non-corrupting location every time the awareness meter goes low) just to improve... realism?

    I would, however, like to see more love for sleep attacks of the kind grobble mentioned. Right now, -Slee is only useful against three monsters, none of which are dangerous with decent PV, if the attack even connects to begin with.
    "And light there be!"

  5. #5
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    High cost and negative benefit. Sleep is just not a fun mechanic.

    Player also doesn't use the loo, or get short of breath, or get a sniffly cold, or an overwhelming lust for sexual satisfaction, etc etc.
    Platinum Edition ADOMer
    http://gamesofgrey.com - check out my roguelikes!

  6. #6

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    That's a bad idea! It's certainly not a "bug."

    I think explaining it away -- through magic or any means -- lacks a sense of fantasy. Proving that a fantasy world is not real is lame.

    A better way to go about it is to realize that not sleeping is the natural order of things. In fact, it's magic or other unnatural forces that cause occasional sleep-like behavior to the residents of Ancardia. I do think the much better question is why the denizens of Earth sleep at all? Why is our world so unlike all the other worlds of the multiverse? Yes, we Earthlings are the ones, indeed, that need a bugfix.
    Last edited by Esoteric Rogue; 12-19-2012 at 12:05 PM.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
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    You're all looking at it from the wrong perspective.

    It's not that beings in Ancardia never sleep, it's that they sleep almost constantly. They only wake up for short moments of time, during which they perform actions. This is the true cause of the turn-based nature of ADoM - it's not that the Creator didn't want to overcomplicate things with a real-time engine, but that the high danger in the Drakalor Chain means that all beings must sleep for very short times between "turns", in order to get sufficient sleep. The so-called "Sleep Attack" isn't really a sleep attack, but a prevention of waking up for some time.

    Anyway, I wouldn't mind seeing the ability to sleep on demand added to the game, but I wouldn't want to see it be "required". Sleeping could have restorative effects - it could promote healing (say, 50% faster), it could aid in the recovery from sickness, and it could aid digestion when bloated, while reducing satiation decrease when below the "satiated" state. It could perhaps also improve the chance of a stat increase on the next stat check (the improvement proportional to the length of time slept) - assuming that the stat has been trained, of course. Having a Plain Blanket in your inventory could slightly improve the positive benefits of sleeping on demand, too.

    On the downside, it would not be easily interrupted. Being attacked by something wouldn't immediately wake you up all of the way, and it would take a couple of extra "turns", during which the PC would have reduced DV, before the PC can attack back or attempt to avoid further attack, with the required time being shorter for characters with higher Perception, Awareness, and Willpower (why Willpower? Because they wake up and force themselves to react).

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Grey View Post

    Player also doesn't use the loo, or get short of breath, or get a sniffly cold, or an overwhelming lust for sexual satisfaction, etc etc.
    Adds a whole new meaning to that burning feeling Chaos Knights can get in their stomach. Help me get this armor off, quick!

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aielyn View Post
    Sleeping could ...
    There're some good ideas .

    I'm deterred away from sleeping because the game is (rightly) based on a single player character . I've had more than one DM who was just waiting for the party to slip up and not specifically state who's on guard, so that everybaddy in the world could kill or imprison us while we slept. Call it D&D flashbacks. I was fortunately never alone in the military. Sleeping alone is a nightmare.

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