A digital watch you can wear (encumbrance 0) that has a built in alarm. While worn this lets you choose exactly how long you’d like to sleep (much like you can while waiting). Obviously you can still be woken up before then, but you won’t sleep past the alarm (The beeping of your watch wakes you.)
I’m not sure if wearable items can use batteries, but if so, the watch should last for quite a long time without replacing the battery. If not, it’s not really a big deal. Most people won’t survive long enough to warrant replacing a watch battery anyway.
Alternatively make the item an Alarm Clock which isn’t worn, but sits in the inventory and passively provides the same effects.
Added this as an issue in the issue tracker, and yes, I think I’ll use this as an excuse to make the clock in the corner of the UI fuzzy unless you have a timpiece on hand. (morning/noon/evening/night or so)
You could even tie the fuzziness to your survival skill somehow. With 0 survival you only know Night, dawn, day, and dusk. With a little survival you could get more specific (Midnight, After Midnight, Dawn, Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Dusk, Before Midnight), and eventually giving you an hourly estimate based on the position of the sun/moon/stars etc.
When it’s cloudy/rainy, you could force it back to Night/Dawn/Day/Dusk regardless of your survival skill.
Anyway, good on the watch thing. Make sure that the alarm has a chance of alerting nearby enemies.
I would personally prefer if the implementation is based on making noise (rather than just automagically waking you), which should in theory take care of that automatically :).
It’ll have to be pretty loud to wake someone with Heavy Sleeper. So the question is, should it be loud enough to wake a Heavy Sleeper, or quiet enough that the Heavy Sleeper sleeps through it? (I err on the side of punishing the person with the negative trait rather than punishing everyone who uses a watch alarm).
I would be totally okay if heavy sleeper makes watch alarms mostly useless. It’s a negative trait after all, and one of the most often chosen because there’s barely any negative consequence (how many times do you sleep in a house in the middle of a zombie infested area?).
Y’know, I wear my wristwatch pretty much wherever I go, including when sleeping. Hell, forgot to take it off when entering the local courthouse today but didn’t set off the scanner. I presumed the player wore a non-alarmed watch already, so losing the time reference is irritating.
Further requests:
Kinetic Watch (One of those high-end/knockoff watches that are analog, mechanical, & self-winding; I wear an Invicta myself)
Pocketwatch: Goes with the whole Suit crowd
For those of us without spare inventory letters:
CBM: Day Planner: includes date/time functions (possibly interface with the existing Alarm System?)
Mutation: Time Sense (Lets you know the time to the hour or so?)
I doubt watches would be terribly rare. I’m sure it would be included in some of the profession/background starting gear, so it shouldn’t be a huge hassle. Until it gets broken. So, uh… keep a spare.
‘Time sense’ type mutations/bionics are a good idea. They could even wake you up without an alarm sounding, by pumping your system with the hormone that wakes you up naturally.
Most of my watches and alarm clocks gives me a choice on what sound it makes on the alarms, as well as how loud it makes the sounds. I imagine this isn’t all that uncommon in the future where cybernetics are being routinely installed.
