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Game dev here. Should you include some sort of maximum amount of sleep per day to prevent people from setting alarms to grow their stars when they aren't sleepi

by mentos 9y ago

Game dev here. Should you include some sort of maximum amount of sleep per day to prevent people from setting alarms to grow their stars when they aren't sleeping?

btbuildem 9y ago
Hmm not everyone sleeps the same amount of time. I have a friend for whom a healthy night's sleep is 10+ hours, with lots of daytime naps.
rocketsloth 9y ago
Thanks for the feedback. There is currently a hard limit in place where a user can't count a star towards the constellation based achievement system unless it grows for a minimum of one hour to prevent unethical star farming. Do you think that's sufficient?
- mentos 9y ago
  Hmm I do appreciate the complexity involved in implementing a max number of hours per day you can grow a star. But I think it may be worth it. The more you clamp down on ways to exploit the system the more player's will respect their achievement. The minimum of one hour is easy to circumvent. I wake up, turn off the alarm and then set another for 12 hours from now.. Theoretically if this is to track healthy sleeping then 6-8 hours max per day is the target. If users start logging 23 hours of sleep a day you probably shouldn't be rewarding them unless its a 'Master Sloth' achievement. haha Maybe a simple solution is to prevent the player from receiving constellation growth unless at least X hours have passed since the last alarm completed? X could be a hardcoded 8 hours or maybe its the size of the previous alarm's duration? Do you plan on having leaderboards or ways to share your constellation? If not I think that could be a feature to make the app more viral. I don't know if it would ever happen but imagine people sharing Nebula links in their Tinder bio as a way to signal healthy living...? Maybe there is a world where you pair users based on their constellation similarities. Could Nebula evolve into a dating app because maybe 'sleep patterns are actually one of the best indicators of compatibility' ? Probably far fetched and poisoning to the core idea but thought I'd share in case it plants any seeds for you.
  - rocketsloth 9y ago
    "The more you clamp down on ways to exploit the system the more player's will respect their achievement." Those are very wise words and something that never crossed my mind. Master Sloth will definitely be making an appearance in some way and I've added it to the Trello board. I do plan on having some form of social interaction, probably something simple to start like sharing constellations you make to social media and I'm most likely going to implement a further limit on star making based on your suggestion. As for Nebula evolving in to a dating app, if a single person ever shared anything related to this app in a tinder bio for any reason at all, I think that's when I'll know it's time for a hard pivot. I believe (and I could be totally wrong) there have been links to people's odors and who they find attractive because we seek partners with complementary immune systems to our own and one indicator of that is the way someone smells. Maybe sleep patterns have a similar correlation. If the pivot ever happens I'll credit you for giving the idea.
    - bigiain 9y ago
      Reminds me of one of my favourite Haiku: In matters of love, let the reptile brain decide. Marry based on smell.
      - rocketsloth 9y ago
        this may be the best comment of the thread
    - depressedpanda 9y ago
      Before you get ahead of yourself with 'pivoting' Nebula into a gamified social network dating app, let me just say that I like Nebula pretty much as it is, in large part due to its simplicity. I like the narrow scope of Nebula, and would happily pay for the app to remove the ads, once you've ironed out some of the rough edges (you really need to remove the flashing indicators in the tutorial). Naturally, if you want to transform the app into something else in the future, that's entirely your choice, and I will simply have to move on to something else that doesn't try to cram social networks down my throat. Also, why care if a user wants to abuse the app to get more constellations? They are only ruining it for themselves, and adding rules and checks will only complicate your code.
telesilla 9y ago
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of personal satisfaction? Or if I'm just in it to grow some stars, does it matter how I use the app?
- mentos 9y ago
  Yea I guess my thought is that the 'carrot' in this system is growing a constellation. You dangle that out there as incentive for people to sleep healthy and wake up on time. If people can circumvent the healthy sleeping by growing stars during the day then it cheapens the experience and I would argue reduces personal satisfaction for the average user. But maybe the move is to leave the system as is and log how often users are 'cheating' the system to grow constellations and maybe the pivot is towards a game where all you do is grow stars.
bastijn 9y ago
Would be interesting to see if this could be linked to whatever these sleeping apps use to “measure” your sleeping rhythm. Bonus points for deep sleep etc. Basically gamification of sleep rhythms. Of course with online leaderboards. Not sure what it means to be world #1 though ^_^. Maybe needs penalty points for too much sleep..

by mentos 9y ago

Game dev here. Should you include some sort of maximum amount of sleep per day to prevent people from setting alarms to grow their stars when they aren't sleeping?

btbuildem 9y ago

Hmm not everyone sleeps the same amount of time. I have a friend for whom a healthy night's sleep is 10+ hours, with lots of daytime naps.

rocketsloth 9y ago

Thanks for the feedback. There is currently a hard limit in place where a user can't count a star towards the constellation based achievement system unless it grows for a minimum of one hour to prevent unethical star farming. Do you think that's sufficient?

mentos 9y ago
Hmm I do appreciate the complexity involved in implementing a max number of hours per day you can grow a star. But I think it may be worth it. The more you clamp down on ways to exploit the system the more player's will respect their achievement. The minimum of one hour is easy to circumvent. I wake up, turn off the alarm and then set another for 12 hours from now.. Theoretically if this is to track healthy sleeping then 6-8 hours max per day is the target. If users start logging 23 hours of sleep a day you probably shouldn't be rewarding them unless its a 'Master Sloth' achievement. haha Maybe a simple solution is to prevent the player from receiving constellation growth unless at least X hours have passed since the last alarm completed? X could be a hardcoded 8 hours or maybe its the size of the previous alarm's duration? Do you plan on having leaderboards or ways to share your constellation? If not I think that could be a feature to make the app more viral. I don't know if it would ever happen but imagine people sharing Nebula links in their Tinder bio as a way to signal healthy living...? Maybe there is a world where you pair users based on their constellation similarities. Could Nebula evolve into a dating app because maybe 'sleep patterns are actually one of the best indicators of compatibility' ? Probably far fetched and poisoning to the core idea but thought I'd share in case it plants any seeds for you.
- rocketsloth 9y ago
  "The more you clamp down on ways to exploit the system the more player's will respect their achievement." Those are very wise words and something that never crossed my mind. Master Sloth will definitely be making an appearance in some way and I've added it to the Trello board. I do plan on having some form of social interaction, probably something simple to start like sharing constellations you make to social media and I'm most likely going to implement a further limit on star making based on your suggestion. As for Nebula evolving in to a dating app, if a single person ever shared anything related to this app in a tinder bio for any reason at all, I think that's when I'll know it's time for a hard pivot. I believe (and I could be totally wrong) there have been links to people's odors and who they find attractive because we seek partners with complementary immune systems to our own and one indicator of that is the way someone smells. Maybe sleep patterns have a similar correlation. If the pivot ever happens I'll credit you for giving the idea.
  - bigiain 9y ago
    Reminds me of one of my favourite Haiku: In matters of love, let the reptile brain decide. Marry based on smell.
    - rocketsloth 9y ago
      this may be the best comment of the thread
  - depressedpanda 9y ago
    Before you get ahead of yourself with 'pivoting' Nebula into a gamified social network dating app, let me just say that I like Nebula pretty much as it is, in large part due to its simplicity. I like the narrow scope of Nebula, and would happily pay for the app to remove the ads, once you've ironed out some of the rough edges (you really need to remove the flashing indicators in the tutorial). Naturally, if you want to transform the app into something else in the future, that's entirely your choice, and I will simply have to move on to something else that doesn't try to cram social networks down my throat. Also, why care if a user wants to abuse the app to get more constellations? They are only ruining it for themselves, and adding rules and checks will only complicate your code.

telesilla 9y ago

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of personal satisfaction? Or if I'm just in it to grow some stars, does it matter how I use the app?

mentos 9y ago
Yea I guess my thought is that the 'carrot' in this system is growing a constellation. You dangle that out there as incentive for people to sleep healthy and wake up on time. If people can circumvent the healthy sleeping by growing stars during the day then it cheapens the experience and I would argue reduces personal satisfaction for the average user. But maybe the move is to leave the system as is and log how often users are 'cheating' the system to grow constellations and maybe the pivot is towards a game where all you do is grow stars.

bastijn 9y ago

Would be interesting to see if this could be linked to whatever these sleeping apps use to “measure” your sleeping rhythm. Bonus points for deep sleep etc. Basically gamification of sleep rhythms. Of course with online leaderboards. Not sure what it means to be world #1 though ^_^. Maybe needs penalty points for too much sleep..