Insanity System

[SPXios]

Thanks to ose that helped me on testing Agoraphobia this last week. To give people a bit of a glance backstage on insanity, the fear of outside (agora) already had several random emits coded and somewhere in the world that had a very, very small chance of giving you the insanity.

First thing I fixed was the existing source of the insanity. It is now more likely that it will cause you to go insane. Unless you have really poor luck, it remains like fear of graves in that you need to really stick around in an obvious dangerous area to get even a minor case. It should take someone actively trying to get a serious case of the insanity for that to actually happen.

I was just able to go through the code for the random emits and they now make sure that you are actually outside. That you could get a panic attack while inside that talked about the wide open spaces was a purely coding issue. Note that there may be a couple inside locations (Axton Field House) that for some reason were not created properly and register as being outside locations. These will be fixed as they are discovered.

I will next be reviewing alternative sources for this insanity. The nice thing with agora is that there really aren't that many natural causes that would make sense in the game. Being attacked outside could influence your sanity but adding that code to the combat system would generate much more work than I would put a team of coders through. Those situations can be handled on the fly. There are a few other options I might have that could cause an insanity that wouldn't work for this insanity. Which just leaves nightmares.

For those of you that have dreams, don't worry too much. Dreaming is a hidden skill that does have 10 levels. Level one is just read only and a dream at that level is highly unlikely to cause insanity.

[Viola]

Should I be worried that I wake up almost every time with a dream? Although, I wouldn't mind my character being a little insane.

[SPXios]

Increased insanity from dreams is still a project in progress.

Dreaming is a skill like any other. The higher your skill, the more dangerous the nightmares are going to be. So if you have just gained the ability to dream, you might remember a short dream about spiders climbing over your bed. If you already have a fear of spiders, that nightmare should be worse. If you don't, then it is just a nightmare and the day's cares will wash it away. On the other hand, if you have gone to the effort to increase that dreaming skill and end up remembering a longer nightmare where spiders crawl over your bed, up your body and into your mouth... That might stick with you and there be a chance you become a little arachnaphobic.

My goal with all insanities would be for the progress to most often be slow and progressive. To reach the point you should be commited would take a serious effort on your part to actually drive your character insane. I.E. You repeatedly sleep in the Muffet house, read every book your can find about spiders and similarly put yourself in situations where your sanity is tested.