Some interesting ideas there. At the moment, I''m thinking in terms of a subtle effect - I''d rather not have the fear score treated like health - take a few pills to fix it up, etc. I''d sooner have more of a realism element - the player needs to logically consider how to balance his character''s fear level. That said, Infinisearch''s idea of praying to sort the situation out is interesting - I might try and come up with a way of integrating that without making it too much of a min/maxing scenario for the player.

I''m actually considering what kind of feedback to give the player re the fear level. I might avoid a stat bar/number or some such altogether and keep it harder to quantify. Maybe have an indication from the character''s breathing level/heartbeat sound, or perhaps simply through the detrimental effects. I want to avoid a situation where the player knows that once his fear level goes above a certain point, this effect kicks in, followed by that one three steps later. The idea being to keep an element of realism and immersion - not have the player thinking about numbers/levels, how to beat the system, etc. I''ll probably introduce a random/fuzzy element to enhance that effect.

It would be fairly trivial to attach a probe to monitor the players heartbeat and feed that data to a port on your pc. Once this data is there , you WILL know if the person is scared or pumped etc... and you can react in real time without having to use some sort of cheesy algorithm that might not truly respond well at all times (for example, targeting gun at sound of monster might just mean you have good reflexes not that you r scared). Become truly interactive with the player!