Night terrors: Nyctophobia Hallucinations redux

[MochaModifier]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Per #64141 hallucinations were removed and the trait has been heavily changed.

One key thing I wanted to break off into a feature request, was hallucinations due to Nyctophobia. I don't wholly agree with them being removed, but do agree that hallucinations as they are just don't fit well with Nyctophobia.

To briefly summarize this feature request - I am proposing auditory and visual hallucinations to emulate a character with nyctophobia becoming progressively panicked in the dark. They can't make out details and see creatures as shadowy figures; start to have trouble telling if that was a footstep they heard, or just their imagination. Too much time in the dark, and they begin to literally jump at shadows - Night Terrors, hallucinations by a panicked imagination.

Given CDDA is a setting where things genuinely go bump in the night, a nyctophobic suvivor's going to have it worse than WEBMD would lead you to believe. It shouldn't JUST be a panic attack they deal with; it's their fight or flight response going haywire knowing exactly what might be out to kill them in the dark.

Of course, all of these problems could be avoided if you'd just turn your flashlight on... right? Or would it be safer to keep it off and just run?

edit: I am re-working this with a hopefully simpler idea

Solution you would like.

I will apologize first off as this may be a big feature ask, and I am not familiar with how the game works under the hood. Please feel free to let me know, as I can curb my expectations

1. Nyctophobes become too panicked to discern details in the dark. Everything looks like a "shadowy figure" to them. Functionally - this could be similar to how thermal vision reveals creatures outside your field of view as heat signatures - but here it's the reverse - anything within player field of vision is displayed as a 'shadowy figure'.

2. (optional) Creature shape/size is hinted by the shadow size: small shadowy creature, shadowy figure, huge shadowy thing, colossal shadowy nightmare etc. This is so players can atleast tell a barn sized creature from a dog sized thing.

3. (optional) the player either can't, or will eventually lose the ability to identify movement sounds as they stay in the dark. Everything starts to sounds like it's going 'bump in the night'. Zombie shuffles, feral footsteps, manhack whirring etc. All the player is told is "Heard something moving!" or "something went bump in the dark!!" However, Explosions bangs, whumps etc. should be as normal. sounds too distinct, to be confused even in a panic.

4. (optional) accuracy of hearing progressively worsens. At first increasing the radius, but eventually giving little more than a general direction from where the noise originated.

The goal here is to deprive the player of useful threat information in the dark. No interference with how far you can see at night or how distantly you can hear sounds; but the player character is simply too panicked to process that information well.

Night Terrors are what could replace the standard hallucinations for Nyctophobia.

1. Night terrors are hallucinations that act like hostile creatures. They too appear as shadowy figures.

2. Night terrors make movement sounds, just like a real creature would. Even if it spawned where a player can't see it, you can still hear it.

3. Ideally, night terrors spawn just outside players sight radius or at it's edge, allowing the player to stumble upon them.

4. (optional) Night terrors should tend to appear near real creatures if they're nearby; again, no preference for friend or foe here.

5. Night terrors begin spawning the longer the player is in the dark. A quick run from house to house should be ok - but venture into the inky dark; panic sets in and the survivor start jumping at shadows.

6. Night terrors don't make a beeline to melee the player, they have all three basic senses, sight, sound and smell. They pursue the player like any other hostile might.

7. When a player reveals a shadowy night terror - it vanishes. This could be with light, or by entering melee range with it. Shooting it may also work? In any case, it's not a real threat - it's a fake out.

Gameplay wise, the goal is to making traveling, raiding or fighting at night a bit trickier - requiring careful thought or judicious use of tools to function in the dark.

Assuming this plays well, it could get players to act like they're afraid of the dark; not because this trait makes it super deadly or punishes with debuffs - but because the lack of information forces an alternative play style.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

Just some parts of this could work on their own - like being unable to tell what a creature is in the dark (unless you get perfect or true night vision maybe?)

Being unable to tell shuffling from foot steps could also be an interesting negative.

Additional context

To quote some sources I found on Nyctophobia, to contextualize this suggestion:

Nyctophobia is characterized by a severe fear of the night. It is triggered by the brain's disfigured perception of what would, or could, happen when in a night-time environment. It can also be temporarily triggered if the mind is unsteady or scared about recent events or ideas, or a partaking in content the brain considers a threat

Nyctophobia is more than just being afraid of the dark. It’s also a fear of what you can’t see. Nyctophobia can be worsened by noises that can be heard through the dark without a visual cause. Nyctophobia can range in severity. Some fear what’s lurking in the dark, some patients feel so fearful of the dark that they don’t want to go to bed in the dark. may

This is where I find context to suggest night terrors, and the inability to identify actual creatures in the dark.

post-cataclysm nyctophobia is plagued with the very real fact that things are going bump in the night - and they actively want to kill you.

Player characters struggle to make out things in the dark, whether it's due to them hyperventilating, unable to focus, panicking... whatever the case, anything could be out there in the dark, and you can't tell if it's an army of mi-go's, or just a single zombie.

This alone might be sufficient as a negative trait, without requiring a character to sprint; but it could pair well with other status effects to simulate panic.

edit: do pardon the edits, I tend to fiddle with posts, otherwise I spend all day trying to draft a post

[MochaModifier]

Also wanted to offer to help with this - if there's any grunt work or JSON fiddling I could help with, please let me know

[MochaModifier]

I basically re-wrote this, because I actually sat and thought about what I wrote. Hopefully this seems more interesting over just simple hallucinations. I'm also wondering if any of this could be broken down into separate negatives - i.e. Night Blindness; can only see creatures as shadowy figures in the dark.

I didn't want to make traits like night vision (from traits, high PER etc) useless - so 'night blindness' was an idea to modify them negatively instead.

Similar idea behind removing sound details from footsteps etc. Good or mutant hearing should still hear distant sounds - you're just too panicked to tell what's going bump in the night.

Because there's talk of making nyctophobia a condition that worsens in stages - I tried to incorporate that here with the audio-visual hallucinations and how night terrors spawn.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not bump or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.