Sleep and fatigue

[LadyWYT]

On the one hand, it'd be neat if there was some added bonus, or eventual penalty(like, after 7 consecutive days awake) for lack of sleep, but at the same time I'm not sure it'd actually be that fun of a game mechanic. Reason I say that, is that I said similar about a thirst mechanic, and tried the mods that added it...and while it was fun, it just ended up being something that interrupted all the other gameplay loops I was trying to do.

So as for how sleeping is now...I think it's actually fine. Aside from roleplaying, it's a quick way to pass the night(or a good chunk of it), especially if you're a more passive player and/or prefer doing most of your stuff during daylight hours. If you have the option enabled in the settings, it's also a good way to bypass the temporal storms, if you're not a fan of those but still want the other lore content. I've also found sleeping to be a good way to recover health naturally(despite there being no boost to regen while asleep, and assuming you didn't wear armor to bed), which lets me keep my bandages for emergencies and travels. If XSkills is installed, sleeping is also a good way to help acquire skill points faster, if you took the perk that gives that bonus.

It's also a better system than what the other block game has. Minecraft will let you go three days without sleeping, and then phantoms start spawning, which are annoying to deal with. However, to counter those, you don't actually need to sleep, you just need to jump in a bed, and then jump back out, and it resets the counter. The problem with that though is that beds reset your spawn in Minecraft, and breaking the bed sets your spawn back to the worldspawn, until you change it again. So it ends up being a mechanic that actively gets in the way of players enjoying the other things the game has to offer, instead of being something that enrichs the other gameplay.

I also agree with what some of the other posters here have pointed out about the multiplayer aspect--multiplayer isn't friendly to just skipping time, since all players online need to sleep at the same time for it to count. And most players don't want to just drop what they're doing to go find a bed. On small servers(ie, a handful of friends only) it can be easier to get everyone on the same page, but it's still a bit of a hassle. Now, you could just mod the server to allow sleeping to skip time if half the players sleep(or even as few as one player!), but the problem that poses is that now players who want/need nighttime for some reason have a frustrating time, because the nights are being skipped(although politely asking for it to be left night will usually solve this problem).

Overall, it's not a very useful mechanic for multiplayer scenarios. It might be interesting as a difficulty toggle for singleplayer, but I think it's best left to the realm of mods, at least for now.

[Steel General]

23 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

But it does, unless you want to watch your seraph sleep for 10 minutes IRL. The 7 hours your seraph spends sleeping are 7 hours someone else is planting seeds.

There's no reason we can't have naps.

No part of this thread is aimed at finding a way to coerce everyone on a multiplayer server into sleeping together.  So.  You can stop worrying about that.

[Thorfinn]

45 minutes ago, Steel General said:

There's no reason we can't have naps.

No part of this thread is aimed at finding a way to coerce everyone on a multiplayer server into sleeping together.  So.  You can stop worrying about that.

I don't understand how that is possible. Please explain how time can skip forward for one player but not for another on a shared world.

The only way I can imagine it might work is if you lie down for your nap and go take a potty break for however long you want to sleep. Either that or you can sit at your keyboard for 7 IRL minutes while 7 in-game hours pass. But will people put up with the boredom of complete inactivity? I just don't see it.

Or maybe that's what you are getting at? Time does not skip forward for the sleeper? You think people would be fine with watching their seraph sleep? If the benefit (temporal stability, healing, whatever) is sufficient, you will choose to just read a book while you wait for your seraph to wake up?

[EDIT]

If you are right. that should be easy enough to test. Should be pretty easy to make a mod that accrues whatever benefit sleep gives, and only skips time if everyone on the server is sleeping.

Edited October 23, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Porkbrick]

If I’m understanding correctly, I think what they mean is that in a multiplayer game you could simply “tag” your bed. Maybe 30 seconds pass and you’ve successfully napped.it could work if the rewards for sleeping were relatively minor, or if they scaled with sleep time. Not ideal. But sleep seems pretty useless in multiplayer right now anyway.

[Thorfinn]

Oh, I see. Yes, that would probably work. Those 30 seconds would be equivalent to a 30-minute catnap. Wouldn't that just be abused? Carry a bed with you, and tag up whenever you want the buff?

Edited October 23, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Porkbrick]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Oh, I see. Yes, that would probably work. Those 30 seconds would be equivalent to a 30-minute catnap. Wouldn't that just be abused? Carry a bed with you, and tag up whenever you want the buff?

Isn’t sleep currently limited in how often it can be used already? I assumed it was.

[Thorfinn]

Yes, you have a cooldown time. Or used to, anyway. But it has to be better to lug a bed out to the iron mine a half-day's trip away. Otherwise, with just the traveling, you would lose much of whatever buff you got sleeping at home.

I'm a little confused. Wouldn't a nap be something different than a good night's sleep? A lesser buff or something? And wouldn't it be reasonable to have a shorter cooldown for a nap?

Incidentally, in MP, most players use hay beds. The time goes back to the normal 1 min=1 hour whenever the first bed's timer runs out. Took me way too long to figure out why others were accomplishing more than I was with the same sleep. Turns out it wasn't the same amount of sleep. I was losing an additional 2.5 hours out of every day.

Edited October 24, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Krougal]

So Project Zomboid has this (for SP anyway) and it is boring as shit to watch your character sleep. Thankfully you can accelerate time to ludicrous speed in PZ.

 

[Thorfinn]

Sleep works fine* for SP or for small groups of friends. Time accelerates to ludicrous speed, and then almost always** goes back to normal when you awake a few real-life seconds later and 7-9.5 game-hours have elapsed, depending on the bed. It does not work well in more informal MP groups for any number of reasons -- you are 1000 blocks away and underground when the rest want to take a nap, you are on time-critical parts of the story-arc, you have a couple forges of hot ingots, you want to do something with hides or foodstuffs before they rot, you are taking hunger damage and want to find food, you are swimming or sailing, you are just rearranging all the storage and daylight is not important, you are chiseling a sofa, you just don't see the point to wasting game-hours, etc.

Which is why I've said repeatedly this is best as a mod. It does not work in the wider MP game settings. Or at least no one seems to have come up with anything better than the Xskills mod to encourage it. And I would not be averse to that becoming adopted in-game, but it would need to be toned down as it soon overwhelms the class abilities.

--

*  For some values of "fine". It doesn't actually do anything at present except waste game-hours.

**  Occasionally, if sleep is interrupted, the ludicrous speed continues, and the day passes in a matter of seconds, and will keep at that rate until you sleep again.

[Echo Weaver]

I'll jump in and say that since the game went to the trouble of implementing a sleep mechanic, I think it should do something other than skip time. Moreover, I find it weird that higher-quality beds allow you to sleep longer. For just time-skipping, I haven't wanted to sleep as long as 7 hours, much less 9, so why craft beds beyond hay bales except that it looks cool? (Fww, looking cool is a totally valid motivation.) I guess the idea is that nice beds provide broader time-skipping options, but as mentioned before, manual wakeup is wildly imprecise.

I really like the idea of sleeping affecting healing and temporal stability. This way, all the effects are positive, and ignoring sleep won't cause a penalty. Those who don't want to sleep just don't have to.

I also think it's fine for this to be something that is easily turned off, along with the many other world customizations. Sleep has always been weird and annoying in that other game in multiplayer. I wish I could turn it off there.

At the very least, I think there should be a mechanic for specifying precisely the hours you want to sleep when you go to bed, at least for higher-end beds. That makes the time-skip much more useful.

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Echoweaver said:

Those who don't want to sleep just don't have to.

OK, but this does not hand-wave away the problem. Presumably those who "don't have to" get the 7+ game-hours of actions that their slumbering brethren do not. I only see two possibilities -- everyone on the server is on ludicrous time, or no one is. If the former, in what sense didn't he have to? If the latter, everyone who is sleeping gets to wait through the 7+ IRL minutes of slumber.

Am I missing some third option?

Again, single player or small group of friends who agree on bedtime, this works fine. An open MP server, not so much. That's likely why there is nothing else that sleep does -- no one can figure out anything that works well in open MP servers.

Incidentally, not entering ludicrous speed when at least one player is not sleeping would be an excellent way of awakening when you want. You can watch the sun rise through the window and get out of bed whenever you choose. Of course, that does commit you to several minutes of idleness.

 

Edited October 24, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Echo Weaver]

4 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Am I missing some third option?

The third option, which has been mentioned several times, including my post above, is to turn the feature off in the config. This would be exactly the same as not implementing the feature at all, except that players who want it can use it.

You don't seem to find this satisfying. Could you elaborate on why?

Edited October 24, 2024 by Echoweaver

[Thorfinn]

It is equivalent to loading a mod that gives you exactly what sleep behaviors you like in your game, but lets you choose what exactly sleep does, and does not entail any extra code in the base game, unlike toggling it off. There's a reason mods slow things down even if they are not in active use at the moment -- it takes up valuable memory.

I don't get why that is so difficult to understand. Machine resources allocated to one purpose cannot be used for other purposes.

That's the beauty of leaving things like this as mods rather than configs. Only those who want that feature take the hit.

Edited October 24, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Porkbrick]

The more I think about it those more I think that sleep should just be disabled for multiplayer. Or at least any sleep mechanic other than time skipping could/ should be disabled 

[Thorfinn]

1 minute ago, Porkbrick said:

The more I think about it those more I think that sleep should just be disabled for multiplayer. Or at least any sleep mechanic other than time skipping could/ should be disabled 

I hate being the contrarian, but sometimes servers full of strangers can agree. Skipping temporal storms when you already have trunks full of gears and Jonas parts, for instance. Or farming once you have a cellar full of food. Explorers and miners still cause problems -- they can wall off and put a bed down, and wake up surrounded by tainted drifters. But late game, particularly after the RA, when everyone is doing the boring stuff, it's quite easy to get people to plan their actions around a midnight bedtime. Animals only reproduce so fast, and if the goal is to end up with Gen10, you almost have to sleep through a third or more of the day.

There are times that there is unanimous agreement to speed up time.

I just don't get the resistance to just leave that in the realm of a mod. Why is that an issue?

[Echo Weaver]

14 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I don't get why that is so difficult to understand. Machine resources allocated to one purpose cannot be used for other purposes.

This seems like an odd hill to die on. The resources required for the proposed feature would be vanishingly small, considering all the visuals and time-skipping are already implemented. It's literally twiddling some numbers on the backend. Noticeable resources are used for things like models and animations. Computers are very, very good at basic arithmetic.

ETA: Also, if you turn it off in the config, it will take exactly 0 additional resources because the code won't execute.

I'm perfectly happy to play it as a mod if someone wants to write it.

Edited October 24, 2024 by Echoweaver

[Thorfinn]

4 minutes ago, Echoweaver said:

ETA: Also, if you turn it off in the config, it will take exactly 0 additional resources because the code won't execute.

Whatever it does is still loaded into RAM, which is why mods that aren't even being called entail a performance hit. Even when you are not cooking any of the Expanded Foods, or are using any of the improved sails from Millwright, they slow things down.

[Echo Weaver]

Just now, Thorfinn said:

Whatever it does is still loaded into RAM, which is why mods that aren't even being called entail a performance hit. Even when you are not cooking any of the Expanded Foods, or are using any of the improved sails from Millwright, they slow things down.

Presumable those mods have their own assets to load. Other things that can chew up resources as I think about it are visual effects and events that happen on a timer. Simply not using the features of a mod at a given moment doesn't mean that it's not doing anything.

But also, mods are not the same as code in the game engine. They're always going to be more resource-intensive precisely because they're not part of the game engine. This is a mod-friendly framework, not like that other game, so I guess the resource would be less.

At any rate, whether or not we find it convincing that a few lines of arithmetic inserted into the existing sleep code will have no performance effect, I think we can trust the VS team to evaluate that if they consider the feature. This is the suggestions subforum after all.

[Thorfinn]

Agreed.

The idea is not simply "arithmetic" though, and I suspect you know that. It's envisioning a new mechanic where there is some resistance to stability loss. Another thirst bar. Yay.

I have not looked into the stability code, so I have no idea what that would entail. I just deal with the game on its terms.

[Maelstrom]

I might add that this "disable sleep" feature is totally unnecessary.  Sleep is by default inactive unless proactively activated.  On MP servers nobody bothers trying to activate the feature.

 

Edited October 25, 2024 by Maelstrom

[Porkbrick]

I had no idea that this would be such a contentious topic. I knew of course that messing with core game mechanics is delicate and would need to be very well considered of course. Lots of aspects to gameplay differences between single and multiplayer I hadn’t really thought about. I still think that sleep, as it is now, feels a little bit incomplete, or like a bit of an afterthought. Certainly not broken, and not necessarily in NEED of fixing, but there is no doubt room for something. 
it’s obvious to me now that there really shouldn’t be any downsides to not getting sleep, as that would just punish players in multiplayer.

I really do like the idea of tying sleep to temporal durability. It doesn’t add another stat bar (no thirst please), it doesn’t punish anyone for ignoring it (if it’s done the way I’m thinking), it ties in to lore potentially, and It gives more purpose to the various beds we already have. It also gives a little more depth to the temporal stability mechanic itself, which I also feel is a bit incomplete. In addition, I think having temporal satiety or durability tied into the game code could open the door for more interesting and intense mods around sleep and consequences for lack of. 
Treat sleep like food and temporal stability like hunger, but default your stability never drops due to lacking sleep. Sleeping can bring your stability back up if it’s down, it can hold your current level where it is for an amount of time proportional to the tier of bed you just used (same as better meals give better satiety). This gives some incentive to build better beds other than aesthetics. 
this way, nobody is punished for ignoring it, it offers some lore tie in, and it gives more purpose to the beds, and opens opportunities for mods to develop the mechanics further. 
multiplayer can ignore it ( or at least treat it the same as it is now), solo players can use it to regain stability after deep cave exploration or time spent in an unstable area, or use it to pause the gear in preparation for a deep mining mission. 

[Thorfinn]

Sleep may well be incomplete, or it may be a game design choice that seems odd for humans, like the half hour of free sprinting per 100 points of meal. I can't say, but it may be related to your character not being human, so different rules apply. One of those odd rules might be seraphs get temporal resistance. Dunno. But since 200+ player servers are on the roadmap, whatever is in the game needs to work for that, too.

Whatever you think of temporal events, they are objective. There is a rift over there. Something materializes some distance from it. All players in the region will see the same thing. This isn't a hallucination, a manifestation of lack of sleep. It's a characteristic of Tyron's post-apocalyptic world. Jonas tech is the mechanism that is obviously intended to deal with it. There's already a Jonas tech device that prevents rifts from appearing. The translocators are some form of applied Jonas tech -- witness the base return and terminus teleporters.

Just be a little patient as this unfolds.

[Echo Weaver]

4 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Whatever you think of temporal events, they are objective. There is a rift over there. Something materializes some distance from it. All players in the region will see the same thing. This isn't a hallucination, a manifestation of lack of sleep.

I haven't delved into the rust world yet (or possibly ever, being a coward), but doesn't that produce player-specific effects? I thought that was part of the point. Temporal stability is subjective.

[Thorfinn]

Temporal stability, sort of. Everyone can have a different amount of current temporal stability. But that's the same as everyone can have a different level of health, or of oxygen, or of satiation. Two of those can be remedied very early in the game. Temporal stability, after you obtain a green gear. Oxygen, not yet, but I suspect that's going to be covered in the roadmap's herbalism. Something like Rowling's gillyweed. It seems a pretty weak thing for Jonas tech to do, but I could also see it as a part of the planned early steam or steampunk genre. Resistance to temporal depletion seems firmly in the realm of Jonas tech.

The reason I say, "sort of" is that when one lets temporal stability get too low, the drifters that spawn in exist for everyone else in the region, too. They are objective reality.

 

[EDIT]

One of my current prognostications is that sometime in the future, after a game-year or two, you won't be able to sleep through temporal storms regardless of whether you selected that in the world setup. You've noticed that your temporal stability spins backwards during a temporal storm? Once that gets below 25% or 10% or whatever, you get the effects of a "wimpy" temporal storm. Or maybe more accurately, you become a mobile rift. The only way out of it currently is to get your stability up by killing drifters or by using a temporal gear to restore stability. I could envision a future Jonas tech that also lets you slowly restore the stability in an area, or even some master rift ward device that puts all the rift wards around you into synchronization and lets your small protected region be the eye of the storm.

Edited October 25, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Maelstrom]

4 hours ago, Porkbrick said:

I had no idea that this would be such a contentious topic. I knew of course that messing with core game mechanics is delicate and would need to be very well considered of course. Lots of aspects to gameplay differences between single and multiplayer I hadn’t really thought about. I still think that sleep, as it is now, feels a little bit incomplete, or like a bit of an afterthought.

I started in 1.14.10 when EVERYTHING that needed baking (clay items, bread, quicklime, torches and a whole lot more) was put through the firepit.  It felt like the rudimentary elements of the game were in place but the game wasn't refined yet.  1.15 gave pit kilns and clay ovens and it felt like the refinement of basic mechanics had started. 

Be aware the dev team is small.  Like Tyron plus another part time coder small.  Just a couple months ago an animator was hired, I assume to lift some of the coding off of Tyron's shoulders.  There's a few others that develop story and art, but coding is pretty much a one man job.  Having such a small dev team is part of what makes this game so GREAT!  The vision is clear and they are steadily working on crafting their passion to it's final state (in about 25 years give or take a decade).

Edited October 25, 2024 by Maelstrom