Sanity Meter : The Nightmare World ( ft. Cellusious )

[SmexyFlux~]

Hi everyone! I'm new to the forums, and this is my first thread, please forgive the long wall of text, I tried spliting it up for a nicer reading ! Thanks!

So, I was reading a topic on the art section, made by Cellusious...

( http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?628-What-if-a-creature-designer-gets-inspired-by-the-style )

...and hence I quote myself :

UOW, just...UOW.

Thats some pretty amazing drawing skills you got there, Cell !

Your art instantly reminded me of the Silent Hill series...that kinda psychological , nightmarish horror...spooky as hell.

However, despite the art's style being very similar and fitting with the game, most of the creatures, at first glance, just don't seem to...idk, fit in the whole scenery,they seem...far too alien, you know?

Like they came from Metroid or something.

BUT,...it would be quite a shame to waste all these wonderful ideas, so I started thinking...and suddenly my brain's brewing some devious things...which I think I'll post on the suggestion forums...brb.

So,...here I am, and here's the deal :

It has been mentioned before, the idea of a ''dream world'' of sorts, as we can see on this thread.

@EDIT

There, the idea had developed to a certain extend, and a ''nightmare'' version came up:

(thx ''themastadon85'', for pointing that out for me.)

Quote Originally Posted by themastadon85 View Post

I think something like this could actually be kinda cool, shouldn't always be oh so happy though? I've read that kevin is thinking about adding a sanity meter? Maybe have nightmares when your sanity meter is low, and have good dreams when its high? Having the chance of losing some stuff in a nightmare, or gaining some cool stuff in a good dream?

Maybe something like this could even be triggered by eating a cooked mandrake? Theyre really rare anyways? Maybe something to do instead of the random waking up in the morning afther eating one?

Quote Originally Posted by chrisso View Post

I was about to suggest some relationship with the sanity meter.

I would suggest, dying in the dream would be equivalent to a nightmare and decrease your sanity.

How about when you dream there can be certain bad things, like monsters that represent your fears, paranoia and insanity. When you defeat them in your dream, it can be a way of gaining sanity. Sorta like overcoming your fear or calming down

Also, in keeping with the "don't starve" theme, if you go to sleep whilst hungry, in you dream, your need for food is exagerrated, and you have to constantly eat food to keep "alive" in the dream. Which represents your subconcious thinking about your hunger. I imagine this would make it even harder to get through a dream without dying and thus becoming a "nightmare"

I do like the idea that dreams could play the role as a narrative device. Complemented with narrative events in the real world, it could fill in backstory or even advance the plot in interesting ways. And I do like the idea of subsequent dreams continueing from where previous dreams left off

Quote Originally Posted by horatio_svetlana View Post

Having dreams reflect what your character went through during the day is an intrinsic idea chrisso.

Go to bed hungry? Your hunger goes down five times as fast.

Lost a lot of health to spiders today? Run away from a hundred spiders til morning.

Following these thoughts, I decided to work it up a bit more, and so...

How bout a...nightmare world, instead?

I've been thinking about what Kevin stated, upon the upcoming feature, the Sanity Meter... we still don't know exactly how it's goin to work, but...

Let's say your Sanity Meter is quite low,...and your on the verge of, well...insanity.

And we all know that insanity brings...nightmares.

That said, whenever the player is in this state, and chooses to use a Straw Roll to pass the night, there would be a certain chance to trigger a nightmare.

Now, please bare with me here, and try to picture this :

The Straw Roll animation would play as usual, the screen would fade black,...

...and when the player wakes up, instead of being greeted with the warm sunlight, the player would appear in , aparrently, the same world, except that everything would be black & white, without any creatures at all, only the wilderness.

The player itself would be the only possible light source,with a passive iluminating radius around him/herself, surrounded by a thick darkness, much similar to the usual night with a torch in hand, except with a slightly larger light radius.

Also, the player's inventory and backpack would be inaccessible, perphaps with all items greyed out, to hint it.

The clock would reset to the beginning of the late night, and the player would have only one goal:

...surving the nightmare.

As the night passes, slowly the player starts to hear wicked sounds, much like the hounds and the grue does, and suddenly horrifying, nightmarish creatures would start to appear (ft. Cellusious art concept ideas), and hunt the player.

These creatures would have a slower movement rate, perphaps something like the Krampus, or abit slower.

The player would not be able to hurt these creatures, he/she could try, but it would be in vain, they would never ''die''.

So, once the player realises that, all he/she needs to do is avoid said horror's, until the night is over.

Seems pretty easy, since their movement rate is slow, right? ...wrong.

As the night passes, the rate of appearance start to increase, and increase...at first, 1 mob...2,...3...4...5, 6 , 7...

They would be slow, but more and more would come, giving a true feeling of despair, as if indeed in a insane nightmare.

And since the player wouldn't have the whole screen visible, he/she could stumble upon one of them by mistake.

But, on the contrary of what you might be thinking, no, the creatures won't hurt the players HP when they land a hit,...instead, with each hit, the player's moving speed will lower a little bit...and if you get hit again, another bit...and another bit...and so forth, and if you get hit enough times, you won't be able to run from them for long, and you better pray for the night to be over, because...

IF the player gets surrounded by the creatures, swarmed by them, (around 15-20 mobs, when the night is almost done)...then the screen would fade black again...and the player would wake up, with the sun upon his/her face, of the following day...however:

-If the player gets swarmed before the nightmare is over, he/she will wake up with a penalty on their Sanity Meter, which would drop even further.

-If the player survives the nightmare, he/she would wake up a little more sane, as a reward.

NOW,...you might be thinking ''well, this is pretty stupid, the only thing I need to do is avoid using the Straw Roll when my Sanity is low, and there ya go''...

And you would be right,...but, no so fast... to counter that thought, there should be some sort of incentive to use the Straw.

So, for instance...each time used, the Straw would recover some little bit of your Sanity (only if used at night, and only if your Sanity is bellow average; you would not be able to get full sanity just by rollin a straw again and again ).

IF you get into a nightmare AND survive it, it would restore even abit more sanity.

Plus, ''winter is coming'', said Kevin...and he also said, that the night will be longer (and as such, the nightmares too),...and winter will be harder, so...you get the picture, eh?

Now, to avoid long, and perilous winter nights, the player also might be tempted to use a Straw...so there you have it, 2 incentives already, but you gotta watch out...

Aside from that, if necessary, there could even be a monster that induces sleep, like say...a Sandman inspired monster, that would only appear sometimes at night,...

Or/and perphaps some sort of food,or lack thereof, or food poisoning, or stamina depletion, which could induce sleep or fainting as well, which in turn could also trigger a nightmare, if low on sanity and at night time.

@EDIT

Another idea for Cellusious creatures, would be to implement them as ''creatures of the night'', that only spawn when the night comes, and perphaps only in certain biomes, or a different one on each biome, idk...making winter nights also much more dangerous, for those who like to catch fireflyes with a mining helmet, heh. XD

So, what do you guys think?

I know this whole idea would take lots of time, effort and preparation, its a bit complex, but I think it would be a nice addition to the whole Sanity Meter feature,... perphaps in the long run, who knows? ;P

To wrap this up, I would like to thank Cellusious for his wonderful art, which inspired me to write this, please go check his topic out!

I would also like to thank Klei Team for this most wonderful game, I'm having tons of fun with it, and for listening to your community, thanks alot! ;D

Cheers!~

Edited December 14, 2012 by SmexyFlux~
Grammar correction, considerations & updates

[horatio_svetlana]

If you made the monsters just black outlines, or very close to pure black, when they swarm the screen would become black. If you didn't survive the nightmare, a nightmare beast should linger at the edge of your campfire the next night.

I had a thread where I thought the player could survive the dreamworld by completing a challenge. This is a really good one if they only wanted to use one nightmare scenario. If they wanted more there could be different challenges.

[Cellusious]

cool....

[McMatthew]

I like the idea of it being it black and white, but it might also be cool if you didn't know you were in a nightmare at first. Like, it would appear that you had a perfectly good night's sleep and had woken up, so you would go about your daily routine. But, as time passed the world would become more and more nightmarish and it would be apparent that you weren't yet awake.

Also, maybe to get out of the nightmare you would have to find your sleeping self somewhere in the dream world and then re-enter their body (does that sound sexual?)

[Xuhybrid]

I got about half way through before i started to disagree with the idea. I think its great that you add some sort of push back (as Kevin calls it) to people abusing Straw Rolls every night. At random as you said you will randomly slip into a nightmare. However i think you should still have access to your inventory, perhaps have a passive glow around the player to make sure its not going to instantly kill a player too, because in some rogue-likes the game just kills you and it is out of your control. This is not what i think Don't Starve is supposed to be offering. Also like you said, you would be attacked by monsters (like hounds, spiders or something new) during this nightmare and it would last as long as a normal night would. Eventually morning rises and you go about your day.

This is a great and simple push back to Straw Roll abuse and it would really add to the atmosphere that already exists. It also really fits with their plans for the game. Id love to hear what they think of both our suggestions to be honest.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Xuhybrid

[themastadon85]

Wow, you know i actually mentioned this in the topic that was about the dreamworld? A nightmare world based on your sanity?

Ofcourse, you worked it out a bit more. Sounds just as epic as i imagined it, so good job on that part

Edited December 13, 2012 by themastadon85

[themastadon85]

Also, i would suggest you guys take a look at the original dream world topic, or at least the following 3 comments:

I think something like this could actually be kinda cool, shouldn't always be oh so happy though? I've read that kevin is thinking about adding a sanity meter? Maybe have nightmares when your sanity meter is low, and have good dreams when its high? Having the chance of losing some stuff in a nightmare, or gaining some cool stuff in a good dream?

Maybe something like this could even be triggered by eating a cooked mandrake? Theyre really rare anyways? Maybe something to do instead of the random waking up in the morning afther eating one?

I was about to suggest some relationship with the sanity meter.

I would suggest, dying in the dream would be equivalent to a nightmare and decrease your sanity.

How about when you dream there can be certain bad things, like monsters that represent your fears, paranoia and insanity. When you defeat them in your dream, it can be a way of gaining sanity. Sorta like overcoming your fear or calming down

Also, in keeping with the "don't starve" theme, if you go to sleep whilst hungry, in you dream, your need for food is exagerrated, and you have to constantly eat food to keep "alive" in the dream. Which represents your subconcious thinking about your hunger. I imagine this would make it even harder to get through a dream without dying and thus becoming a "nightmare"

I do like the idea that dreams could play the role as a narrative device. Complemented with narrative events in the real world, it could fill in backstory or even advance the plot in interesting ways. And I do like the idea of subsequent dreams continueing from where previous dreams left off

Having dreams reflect what your character went through during the day is an intrinsic idea chrisso.

Go to bed hungry? Your hunger goes down five times as fast.

Lost a lot of health to spiders today? Run away from a hundred spiders til morning.

[SmexyFlux~]

@ Xuhybrid

However i think you should still have access to your inventory, perhaps have a passive glow around the player to make sure its not going to instantly kill a player too, because in some rogue-likes the game just kills you and it is out of your control.

~

The player itself would be the only possible light source, iluminating a certain radius around him/herself, surrounded by a thick darkness, much similar to the usual night with a torch in hand, except with a slightly larger light radius.

Maybe I've not said it right, but that's exactly what I was referring to, an automatic passive glow around the player, when him/her wakes up inside the nightmare. ;P

[Guest Dandytard]

I think this song would go great with the topic.

More or less, Anyway

[SmexyFlux~]

@themastadon85

Also, i would suggest you guys take a look at the original dream world topic, or at least the following 3 comments:

Oh, I see...I'm new , so I haven't seen that, I'm so sorry.I didn't wanted to take any of your ideas, please forgive me.

I'll edit my post to mention your thoughts as well ! Thanks ! ;D