[Edited] "It's much too cold to sleep here."

[Codaisthisguy 16]

**Revised to better flesh out the suggestion**

So there's been a lot of debate in a recent thread. This is not an attempt to revive the hellstorm, so please behave as this is only a suggestion to make sleeping mechanics in TFC more “Believable.”

Temperature: Something that already plays a major role in the mod so far, and personally I really like where it's going, but it came to my attention that this may solve the long set debate on “Travel Sleeping.” That many players butt heads about.

First example:

A fresh player is dropped into the world without the comforts of an easy night's sleep, working up to the point of metal working before an official bed is actually available. That's all well and good, and from that point they've essentially got a way to skip nights if they want to. In this case, they're still able to skip nights to their hearts desire, but the issue of ambient temperature will now play a major role in not only being able to sleep, but in using any bed as a spawn point -at all- by checking the temperature of the bed itself. This means either the thatch or vanilla bed in game will not let a player sleep in the open night's air, since it is too cold. This also keeps from setting spawn points, so to have the luxury of rest and an established checkpoint, they are going to have to establish themselves.

In game example:

A player is traveling the landscape in search of strong vein of ore to bring back to their home base, but their travels have set them more than a typical day's time away. Along the way they may want to try and sleep through the night, here's where the intended mechanics kick in.

Firstly, a bed on it's own won't work, as the air will be too cold year round to sleep in, so you'll need a firepit or some other method of heat, natural or man-made.
Second, “just” a fire pit will not be enough. If you place the bed right next to one, it can catch fire. (Seriously, all that cloth?) However, if it's too far away, and still in open air, the heat is rising away from the bed even at an extra block away, so that doesn't help much.

The solution to this is to build a shelter, it doesn't have to be fancy, but it has to have the following things:

• Space for the bed and a heat source, preferably a block from each other.
• A roof to trap the heat inside the shelter.
• Somehow, the ambient temperature of the shelter blocks need to translate to the bed, showing that it is indeed warm enough to sleep.

This isn't a lot to ask, since some thatch, a few bits of log or any other building block can build a quick and easy mini-hut to solve this problem. Not a big deal right? That's the point. This suggestion is only intended to make things more believable, without interfering with anyone's play style.

You have a balanced decision, keep walking through the dark, and risk the company you invite with your traveling, or build yourself a little campsite, and sit tight.

This serves as support for more resource use, since by the time you'd have a vanilla bed, you probably have plenty of spare blocks to put to use. You could pack up a carry along outpost kit for your journey, and when you find what you're after, this mechanic enforces one extra reason to build a believable setup for your time there, and what's better, if you need to make a return trip, you're already set up to stay a couple nights again.

It may seem like I'm picking on the typical player that likes the sleeping mechanics as it is, but with temperature mechanics still fleshing out, warmth may become a real requirement in survival. In a cold winter's night perhaps, your movement could be slowed down by the chill stiffening your muscles, and your hunger could drop faster due to the extra fat in your body being burned for warmth. That sounds like a perfect reason to seek shelter, unless you want a creeper coming up for an easy hug.

Q/A (argued with myself for an hour, I'm good at that):

-What if someone places a bed right next to a firepit and quickly hops in the bed? Will that count?
That is going to be up to the developers, if I had my way though, I'd have the game check first, much like it checks for charcoal pits having been built. Even if you could jump in the bed before it catches fire, by the time you actually fall asleep, you're probably going to be cooking under the covers... literally.

-What if I find a lava pit or some cave that can provide enough heat without a fire?
Good job, you found a “believable” circumstance in which you can benefit from natural occurrences in your world. Now that you've gotten your rest, I bet you won't find that a second time in a row, or a third.

-What if I place a torch next to the bed? It's a fire source that provides heat, but not enough to start a fire.
It's a burning stick... I shouldn't have to explain the miniscule amount of heat that would provide compared to the night air.

-What if I just build a roof of thatch held up by a few logs?
Still technically a roof, and if the game agrees with your methods, that's all that really matters. Besides, if you cared that much to exploit the mechanic, why are you playing TFC?

-What about in multiplayer? Surely not everyone is going to sleep through the night.
By setting this up, you also create a new spawn point. Even though you can't sleep unless everyone does, you can't set up a spawn point without having that warmth in place.

-Well what about sleeping bags? You don't need a shelter for those.
Again, I'll leave this up to the developers, they're going to be deciding if they want to use this or not anyways, but with a sleeping bag in mind, it could be possible to make an extra insulated bed roll, but the catch is that you would need to carry it on your back like a barrel due to it's size and density. For those who like to haul barrels around to really fill up on their resource hunting, they might want to bite the bullet and just go with making shelters, unless they'd rather make more trips in exchange for easy travel sleep.

-Well what about...
Ask anything, this isn't a debate, it's a suggestion for discussion.

In my conclusion, personally. I'd -love- to see this kind of mechanic put in place, for more than I can suggest in this topic. Just to see it in gameplay would be awesome, and it may actually sway me to sleep through nights again just for the sake of accomplishment, that and I have more than enough extra blocks around to make a few hobbit holes here and there.

 

Edited 10 Oct 2014 by Codaisthisguy

[Thrainn 2]

I must say, I kinda like the idea ...

[lightningtiger88 19]

Sort of like the idea that it has to be a certain temperature to set the spawn point too.However, what prevents them from just making a firepit and hopping in while its still running off the sticks used to make it? Will the player themselves have to heat up? How long will that take? Will it be worth spending 2 minutes setting up to sleep only to get rid of six minutes of night(by the time you've finished) and spend another 2 minutes tearing it down again? Things to consider.

[Codaisthisguy 16]

Sort of like the idea that it has to be a certain temperature to set the spawn point too.However, what prevents them from just making a firepit and hopping in while its still running off the sticks used to make it? Will the player themselves have to heat up? How long will that take? Will it be worth spending 2 minutes setting up to sleep only to get rid of six minutes of night(by the time you've finished) and spend another 2 minutes tearing it down again? Things to consider.

Nothing's stopping them from exploiting the time of the code, -unless- it lit on fire with them in it, the game could simply wait to be sure that the bed is in a valid position as well, same logic for things like charcoal pits.And how much it's worth to prepare is entirely up to the player, after all, they could prepare early once they've found a place with what they're after. The purpose of this after all is to keep with the believable theme of TFC, while giving the best of both worlds for the players. It doesn't keep people from making beds or carrying them about, but it does make the process less "cheaty" in practice.That, and there's nothing keeping the developers from adding another bed with a higher building requirement, like an insulated bed roll that needs to be carried on your back. You only need a fire pit nearby for that one, and it could be a somewhat "natural" coloration so it brings less attention to mobs, making that item itself also believable, and since it's a back carried item, it adds a sort of "one or the other." exchange for something like carrying a barrel for stockpiling extra resources for your journey.Again, none of these are meant to force anyone to either side of the battle of the beds here, everyone is still free to do things their own way, but it gives a more earned feeling for those who appreciate the concept of settling in to a temporary building site. It also gives players a small established sub-base to return to if they feel the resources nearby are worth the back and forth travel, which is necessary already to really prosper in TFC's world style.

[TonyLiberatto 364]

I like this idea, but I think instead of just a  sleeping bag the player should carry a full tent on his back. It rains a lot in TFC and getting wet makes you cold. I would like the tent to be a real multiblock structure. It would set your spawn and skip the night, but it requires a bonfire in front of the tent one block away from the entrance. It's expensive requiring several hides, but it should not require metal. people need to be able to explore to find metal.

Maybe it should require some assembly so it would not be a instant set and sleep.

[Codaisthisguy 16]

I like this idea, but I think instead of just a  sleeping bag the player should carry a full tent on his back. It rains a lot in TFC and getting wet makes you cold. I would like the tent to be a real multiblock structure. It would set your spawn and skip the night, but it requires a bonfire in front of the tent one block away from the entrance. It's expensive requiring several hides, but it should not require metal. people need to be able to explore to find metal.

Maybe it should require some assembly so it would not be a instant set and sleep.

I hear multiblock entities never really play fair with modders, but we have similar items. However I believe it should require -at least- very high grade tools to create it, or it will completely defeat the entire reason behind this mechanic.That, and if it's going to be a tent, I'd say that it should be a bed that doesn't set spawn, since tents aren't exactly shelters. However it could still be a great way to sleep while traveling.