Please add an option to wake at dawn

[idiomcritter]

What if the game had an alarm clock that could be set to wake... powered by a tgear maybe.  and sleeping wouldn't just be for night, allowing napping.... you know, when you just want to speed the game up for a moment while waiting for the animals to breed.... idk 

[Maelstrom]

Personally, I like the current sleep mechanic; including the buggy sleep abort.  IRL I may wake well before my alarm wakes me up or sleep longer than I think I will (when I don't set an alarm).  I'm not against an option to wake at dawn consistently, but like @Thorfinn I wouldn't use it since the current mechanic is more organic and enjoyable to me.

[Thorfinn]

31 minutes ago, idiomcritter said:

What if the game had an alarm clock that could be set to wake

It already does. Instead of right clicking on the bed and answering "Yes" or however the bed works, just look at it and type, 

/time set [lunch|day|night|latenight|morning|latemorning|sunrise|sunset|afternoon|midnight|witchinghour]

as appropriate.

[idiomcritter]

19 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

It already does. Instead of right clicking on the bed and answering "Yes" or however the bed works, just look at it and type, 

/time set [lunch|day|night|latenight|morning|latemorning|sunrise|sunset|afternoon|midnight|witchinghour]

as appropriate.

I was only causally aware of that command and is a good tool/function thanks.

 

Still like the idea of an additional game mechanic that acts as an temporal powered alarm clock idk

[Thorfinn]

It's an interesting idea. Another use for temporal gears that still wouldn't make it worth bothering killing drifters.  

[Malnaur]

25 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

It's an interesting idea. Another use for temporal gears that still wouldn't make it worth bothering killing drifters.  

You know there is a whole tier of crafting advanced devices using exotic components that must be harvested from various spiders, right? Part of the rest of what the game offers.

And, no, typing console commands is not a solution to an already immersion disrupting hack around. I'm sorry @Thorfinn, but IMHO I don't think you are playing the game other than superficially and ignoring much of what makes it unique, If that's your thing. enjoy, but don't ruin things for the rest of us. 

[Thorfinn]

Meh. I've built one of those late game devices, and its a stretch to call any of them even underwhelming.

Spoiler

Something that keeps drifters from spawning? How is that any better than just ignoring/dealing with them, as I've done the rest of the game? And that's the most potentially useful. What's the point of having something that teleports you to where you died when you play permadeath? To say that was a disappointment is again a major understatement. Night vision? What's the point if darkness isn't an issue in the first place, because you've invented the cutting-edge technology called a "lantern" or even a "torch"? And that's all assuming you are going to be grinding enough to find all the parts for one.

51 minutes ago, Malnaur said:

And, no, typing console commands is not a solution to an already immersion disrupting hack around.

So don't flippin' do it! Build your bedroom with windows and a skylight, so you know when it's morning rather than using "C". Right clicking on a bed isn't really all that "immersive" in the first place, nor is the fact that time fast-forwards while you do so. There's no functional immersion difference between setting a macro for that console command and right clicking on a bed, for Pete's sake!

[EDIT]

Spoiler tags, in case someone might think those are spoliers.

[/EDIT]

Edited January 11, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Malnaur said:

but don't ruin things for the rest of us. 

This one still bothers me. How exactly is expressing my preferences "runining" things for you or anyone else?

And if somehow it does, didn't you do exactly that in the OP and pretty much every one of your replies?

Edited January 11, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Malnaur]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

This one still bothers me. How exactly is expressing my preferences "runining" things for you or anyone else?

And if somehow it does, didn't you do exactly that in the OP and pretty much every one of your replies?

Because, unless you are a compulsive poster or a troll, you would not have taken the time to post your first response, much less the rest, if you truly didn't care. You clearly disagree with my suggestion so strongly that you felt the need to chime in here with 'do not do this'. No matter how much you digress with soft words, your purpose seems clear. I wouldn't make such an effort unless I thought the suggestion would damage the game. my suggestion is absolutely innocuous and would have zero impact on your play style. I guarantee the devs are spending far more time on other features you also will not use. All of this said, this forum smells like a honey trap the devs rarely if ever pay attention to and diverts players from complaining directly, Otherwise, it would be part of the git repo workflow.  So I doubt you ever have to worry about my distracting them. I'm done beating this horse. It's dead, Jim.

[Thorfinn]

8 minutes ago, Malnaur said:

Because, unless you are a compulsive poster or a troll, you would not have taken the time to post your first response, much less the rest, if you truly didn't care.

Well, of course I care. I'd prefer the time not be wasted on making VS more like Minecraft. But you care, too, or you would not have bothered suggesting it. You just don't see it as wasted time.

Troll.

[Gorfinhofin]

I agree that the sleeping mechanic is weird and clunky as it is. It's especially irksome how the menu clock tends to lag behind the actual time a little bit, so you actually have to get out of bed slightly before the time you want. How about a "Sleep for how many hours?" prompt, like in the Elder Scrolls games?

[Irulana]

Mechanical clock with alarm would be nice for that

[Torondor the Builder]

On 1/8/2024 at 8:57 AM, Malnaur said:

Please add a config setting to wake up at dawn. Watching the clock leap in large intervals and having to close the character window and THEN hit space is beyond clunky and unreliable. Minecraft had this right all along. Alternatively, allow a choice when starting sleep to 'only sleep until dawn' if your bed will take you beyond it. Daytime is too short to waste.

I have an optional idea:  Feathers have very little use outside of making arrows.  Perhaps add a new bed recipe that uses comfort (either feathers instead of hay, or a feather comforter or pillow, etc.) to have the bed come up with a "Sleep for _______ hours" when you lay down.  Similar to other games.  So that you could do anything from a nap to a full night etc.  or at least up to the maximum allowed on the bed.  Just a thought.   

Another option would be to allow for said "feather beds" to allow you to sleep through temporal storms (obviously this would require some tweaks to the current settings).

 

[Maelstrom]

Sounds like a good mod idea.

[PotatoMustDie]

I don't think waking up at dawn every single time no matter what would be a good idea. That would negate the consequence of sleeping late and would also negate the benefits of different types of beds.

HOWEVER, it would be an interesting addition to be woken up by a rooster at dawn if it's within a certain distance away from you. It would also be interesting if you'd be able to craft an alarm clock from some item dropped by a bell. 

 

[Trofogol]

This topic reminds me project zomboid experience when sleeping without alarm set will lead to waking up at random time. We have ways to avoid that in a clunky way in VS, but we don't have easy access to high tech here. 

Alarm clock and noise based mechanics (I like the rooster idea) look interesting, maybe adding light based mechanics will be good as well (e.g. specific level of sunlight wakes you up and don't allow to sleep until you get rid of windows or craft and use blindfold/curtains. 

Edited May 28, 2025 by Trofogol

[AppleJam]

I'd imagine the chicken farms would end up either further away from home or some poor aggravated seraph is going to have some poultry to cook soon lol but yeah it'd still be a nice option, as it is I simply keep all three types of bed (hay roll, crafted bed and found aged bed) for different times it lets me sleep and sleep accordingly to when I want to wake up, though I do wish I could set how much I'd sleep sometimes so I wouldn't have to keep beds around that don't really look that fitting into my more advanced home at this point.

Playing with Xskills on also helps me have a reason to sleep aside from avoiding the darkness as sleeping and waking up gives me an exp boost for a period of time depending on how long I'd slept. I wound up spawning somewhat north so my nights are long and days are short for at least half the year, so sleeping is definitely a plus and must for me. Especially since I hate traveling during the night, too often I get spooked by whatever spawned and jumpscares me lol

And camping out with a firepit, my bedroll and my elk while I cook some meat I hunted during the day while traveling is also a mood too. Though since I usually travel during winter and having spawned somewhat up north the nights are if anything too long to sleep completely through.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 1/9/2024 at 5:58 PM, Malnaur said:

BTW, the sleep machinery is already there. They need to add maybe 2 lines of code to add a check for dawn as well as elapsed total time. I'm including adding the option selection code. OK, three lines of code.

Sounds like you found your own solution. Edit the code and submit a pull request here. <<<link to actual source code for the game

As for what people do during the night? In no particular order here's what I do:

• Cooking food
• processing metals
• building structures (yes at night with even light or medium rift activity is not a dangerous process, especially if you have a lantern or two)
• mining
• panning gravel/sand
• making leather
• travelling (yes at night with even light or medium rift activity is not a dangerous process, especially if you have a lantern or two)
• etc

before I know it, it's day again!

[Maelstrom]

I just don't understand why sleeping is so important.  There's just too much to be done. Even after I've created my quad hammer, dual or quad steel furnaces, have steel armor, I just don't have enough time to sleep.  There's always at least a few items on the to-do list that precludes sleep.

[Facethief]

On 6/4/2025 at 10:31 AM, Maelstrom said:

I just don't understand why sleeping is so important.  There's just too much to be done. Even after I've created my quad hammer, dual or quad steel furnaces, have steel armor, I just don't have enough time to sleep.  There's always at least a few items on the to-do list that precludes sleep.

But what if it isn’t about the utility, and more about establishing a cycle? You can’t Eat, Work, Eat, Sleep, repeat without sleeping! Besides, any growing Seraph needs 7-9 hours of sleep and a good diet (of raw onions).

[lying_dice]

That would be a pretty useful feature especially to better facilitate more play styles, especially more cautious ones.

I have a bit of good news, the long janky process to wake up that you described isn't necessary I wake up early simply by pressing shift.

In terms of the criticisms I've seen for this idea so far they are massively off mark. There is very little reason to comment on a suggestion for a modification to a feature that one do not use, or have any intention of using. Especially if one feels that the feature in question is pointless. Such responses are not predisposed to being helpful. These responses are  good evidence of that as only one of the criticisms actually have anything to do with the change requested. Otherwise they exclusively argue against the utility of sleeping as a mechanic which is largely unrelated. The one criticism I've found of the suggestion itself is that they would prefer that effort not be expended on something that the writer of the criticism had no use for. Such a criticism seems a strange thing to say about vintage story, which has an entire mechanic for catching butterflies. Also it seems like the forums would get clogged if responding to suggestions on mechanics that you don't use just to say that you don't use the mechanic was a common thing to do. 

All that said I do have one legitimate critique of this idea. I do somewhat enjoy trying to time my wake up.  A better way to know how long till dawn would probably fix the problem you are expressing. Beyond that it would be nice to have some better way to judge the time until dawn not just for the sake of sleeping but also just while doing things because there are certain things that i don't like doing at night and it would be good to know how long i have to wait to be able to do them. 

Final thing: my defense of sleeping as a mechanic. While it is nominally true that there is always something to do to improve your situation in this game depending on player values the best thing to do with night time is to heal and and considering that there are reasons to value day time over night time it makes sense that a player would want to only spend their night hours healing this way.  more importantly though is the fact that time in vintage story is only valuable in a relative sense. During most of the in game year time is only valuable because every moment passed is a moment closer to night and/or to winter at which point things become much less convenient. so during a winter night which is the least convent time there is no particular reason not to skip forward in time and depending on how much you value skipping night vs spending as much play time as possible not in winter skipping night in general might make sense. 

That said even if game time had some inherent value in vintage story the highest priority in general in video games is to do things that you enjoy. So if there are things that can be done to improve ones situation but none of those things are fun enough to feel worth doing then there kind of isn't anything to do. 

Notably I am not saying that people are wrong not to use the sleep mechanic that would be an incredibly bad take. What i am saying is that for some people in some situations the sleep mechanic makes sense.

[Broccoli Clock]

Personally I'm all for a sleep mechanic, and.. although this will bring ire from some.. I wouldn't be against VS implementing a mechanism where you are rewarded for sleep. Just a passive buff, nothing more, and certainly not forced (yes, there are mods that can do that, but I'm talking very basic). After all, if we manage our food then we get a HP buff.

I don't always sleep, I don't RP it so that I have to, and I've spent multiple nights either chiselling or cooking in batch, but there are times - especially in the winter when the daylight is short - when I've wanted to go exploring and it's dark. I see no issue with sleeping to pass time, no matter if it's inefficient - it's not like there is a time limit to the game.

I like the cottage core nature of it too, just like I enjoy bubbling cooking pots I also enjoy a cozy decorated bedroom where I can fall into bed. All that is personal preference of course, people should play the way they want, I'm not gatekeeping here.

 

However the main reason for this post is that I notice nobody is mentioning the beds. In my playthroughs I will tend to have a range of beds, (hay, wooden, aged - 7.5, 8.5 and 9.5 hours respectively) and will swap them out dependent on how long I want to sleep (normally depends on the season). 

I don't like the idea of a "wake at dawn" as to me it sort of goes against the "you blend into the world, you don't control it" vibe.