Frictional Games Forum (read-only)

As the topic states? It seems as if sanity loss triggers in pitch black, but at times I have had it trigger in dimly lit rooms.

I suppose it triggering in a dimly lit room will not advance nearly a far as it would in pitch black, meaning you will probably not go very insane in a dimly lit room. (Unless there's a monster stratching on the wall outside).

You can check yourself with the in-game debug menu. The "show player info" debug option gives you a list of the players stats so you can see your sanity decrease as it happens.

To enable the debug menu, in your main_settings.cfg file change LoadDebugMenu="false" to true. Then start the game and press F1 to show the debug menu.

I sure hope the sanity isnt like the one in Eternal Darkness, that is the only game ever, thats really made me question if i was loosing it. Suddenly bugs crawling under the glass on the TV, the gamecube suddenly giving a blue screen of death. really scary actully lol

I made some tests to see how it really worked. I hope it has more impact on the gameplay in the full version than just some breathing, crunching and drunken controls. After 5-6 minutes in complete darkness I heard a strong noise that filled my (daniel's) head and then my sanity reverted to almost normal levels.

It makes me wonder if it won't become just a decorative effect later on. Because from what I've read in the previews, you have to choose between being hidden or sane. That would be enough to evoke horror. Because if the loss of sanity would truly bring the horror, then you would be so frighten that maybe you would decide to turn the light on despite the real monster looking for you.

And THAT would be the horror game of this millennium.

But if it all goes down to crunching and breathing and crunching and drunken controls, then a temporary recovery, then I think you all will get used to it sooner or later and won't see it as a problem if staying in darkness keeps you safe, because you will clearly see that loosing sanity won't kill you.

And THAT will kill the credibility of the concept behind it.

I'm worried.

Just because I also read that there are tonnes of "sanity health" potions.

There are no sanity potions, I read. There were, but they were taken out.

What I understood from reading the manual is that sanity can be recovered when some puzzles are solved. As long as the player doesn't manage to do so, his sanity will get worse and worse, which makes solving the puzzles more difficult and frightening.

This sounds like a good mechanism to me... It means you can always get out of a tricky situation, but this becomes more difficult as the character gets insane. Also, when insane, the character has more trouble escaping from monsters etc. so it gets pretty dangereous. (apart from the affected vision)

(well, from what I understood We'll see soon in the complete version. In any case, this seems a be an amazing game, very cheap. And thanks for the Linux support !! Works like a charm here will full details. (Ubuntu 10.10 beta + gf9800 GE)