Add disincentive to spam spacebar

[plbrault]

Since key bindings have been introduced, the player can constantly spam the spacebar instead of handling I/O events when they come in. I would like to introduce a consequence when pressing the spacebar / clicking the I/O events button in absence of events. The consequence(s) remain to be determined. Here are a few ideas:

• Remove points
• Make it longer for active processes to become green
• Add some kind of cooldown

If the solution could make sense on an OS theory point of view, that would be even better.

Suggestions are welcome!

[Chrisk1905]

This sounds like a tough problem to gamify.

• Have users individually unblock I/O operations in processes
• Remove manually handling I/O events entirely, and have all I/O events unblock themselves automatically

[jbrokamp]

Some comment to the proposal of @Chrisk1905:

Individual unblocking you will not be able to do with the keyboard, I assume, so I wouldn't personally want that. Also that sound like a game mechanic for the harder modes. The other one sound good, I do not oppose auto unblocking, since managing blocked processes is already quite a burden. Maybe EASY/NORMAL modes have auto unblock?

If you want to keep the I/O events as a user action, you could have currently blocked processes (hourglass) extend the block with 1 or 2 seconds as a penalty. From OS perspective you would be occupying resources making an actual event take longer to occur.

[ElijahLynn]

I think this makes sense (after having just played for 30m for first time). I think it could be as easy as this:

• if you hit space bar and no I/O events to process, negative points
• if you hit space bar and there are I/O events to process, positive points

Maybe it just kicks in Hard mode and above though?