Hunger Code

Mele · Post by **Mele** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:47 pm

I think it's time for a serious revision to the hunger code, or removal all together. (I'm more for the second, personally. Though I know that's very highly unlikely!)

Some of the biggest problems with the code I find:

- It takes approx 30 apples or 15 cakes or 4 packets of rations or 2 loaves of bread or 4 stews to fill your character up. If the point of the hunger code is realism, that is not very realistic at all.

- It's incredibly frequent. If you fill your character up, you're going to wind up having to do so again probably in an hour of play. While this is logical for literal in game time, it's not very logical in general. In an hour, though several in game hours have passed, only an hour of roleplay or dungeon crawling has.

- Adventuring and eating? To me this makes very little sense. "Hold on guys, gotta eat these four packets of rations before the next rush of ogres." I imagine that an adventuring party would go dungeon crawling for what, 8-12 hours? They would probably eat before hand and maybe bring light snacks for inside. Maybe they would stop within for a quick meal, but on a MUD that's less practical with roaming aggressive mobs.

- Lowbies losing limbs and heads because of the hunger code. I cannot tell you how many times I've had my head pop off of starvation. Or my limbs all turn purple. As a lowbie it progresses insanely quickly, maybe two starving warnings in you're purple limbed. Meanwhile, a level 50 gets nothing of damage.

- Overall impracticality makes tending to the hunger code at all pretty much an unroleplayed often ignored factor. You'll often see:

Bob yells at Bill 'Well, you can shove it up your arse!'
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill snarls at Bob 'Let's take this to the fields!'

While we all might say meh that's just bad form, your choices are pretty slim there. If your character got hungry mid-confrontation it would be something easily ignored. But on a MUD, you cannot -really- ignore it for too long or you'll be seeing faeries. I won't pretend I don't do this at constant. Heck, I'll even do it mid battle just to get rid of the echoes. I'm probably the worst about it.

Ideas for fixes:

Well, the easiest would be to make eating purely cosmetic. That's essentially what it is right now. The only time a meal is roleplayed is when people legitimately go for a meal, otherwise it's just the code being answered to.

But if we're going to keep it:

- Make more foods fill more quickly. I'm aware at how much of an overhaul this would take. But 30 apples? 15 cakes? It's all a bit much.

- Make timers run moreso on real life time than game time. This will make it so people can do a dungeon quest without spamming eat rations bag awkwardly at some point.

- Make the damage caused level based, so a level 10 isn't taking the same amount of damage as a level 50. The level 50 goes unharmed while the level 10 loses a head. Both should be receiving the same exact consequence of not eating, logically.

- Make it so your character actually has to stop what they're doing to eat. Maybe they have to sit to eat or something. Something that makes us need to roleplay it, but only if it's much, much less frequently necessary.

Additions?

Tarven · Post by **Tarven** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:58 pm

I could see throwing pulse code into it somewhere? As in, if you're adrenalized, your hunger doesn't decrease. That would mean that it would happen FAR less often while you're actually in a fight.

I was also thinking about this recently, and I think a lot of the food needs an overhaul. Plus, the prices don't 'stand'. According to SRD, eating 'good' (as opposed to fair or poor) would cost 5sp per day. I think I can go through that in about one sitting.

On the flip side, though, just to play devil's advocate here... If you're not eating to full each time, but only until 'no longer hungry', or one meal after 'a mite peckish', it's a bit more realistic. Somewhat. Granted, eating 'a loaf of bread' in one meal just doesn't make a lot of sense, or eating 4 servings of travel rations, and not puking from being over stuffed.

I agree that it -could- be made entirely cosmetic. On the other hand, there are enough ways to counteract hunger. Heroes' Feast, ring of sustenance, sustain spell, etc.

But, I've never let myself get so hungry that I took limb damages, so I can't really comment on that. <.<

Lylena · Post by **Lylena** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 9:09 pm

Mele wrote:I think it's time for a serious revision to the hunger code, or removal all together. (I'm more for the second, personally. Though I know that's very highly unlikely!)

I like this.

Mele wrote:Well, the easiest would be to make eating purely cosmetic. That's essentially what it is right now. The only time a meal is roleplayed is when people legitimately go for a meal, otherwise it's just the code being answered to.

I like this, too.

Mele wrote:- Make more foods fill more quickly. I'm aware at how much of an overhaul this would take. But 30 apples? 15 cakes? It's all a bit much.

- Make timers run moreso on real life time than game time. This will make it so people can do a dungeon quest without spamming eat rations bag awkwardly at some point.

- Make the damage caused level based, so a level 10 isn't taking the same amount of damage as a level 50. The level 50 goes unharmed while the level 10 loses a head. Both should be receiving the same exact consequence of not eating, logically.

And all this.

Mele wrote:- Make it so your character actually has to stop what they're doing to eat. Maybe they have to sit to eat or something. Something that makes us need to roleplay it, but only if it's much, much less frequently necessary.

This one forces RP, but it's not exactly bad. If it happens much, much less frequently, I can see this a possible thing, say if it went more along real life game timers instead of current timers as mentioned above.

Trillarel · Post by **Trillarel** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:53 am

Hmm. I must say I am a fan of the hunger/thirst being actually represented and not only cosmetic.

However, as Mele pointed out, foods should be more filling and starvation damage should be level-scaled. Even though I haven't ever lost my limbs from hunger, I don't like that it can happen. Also, eating stuff in a middle of a fight isn't too RP and I believe the timer should be delayed when in a fight, so that the message shows up after a fight.

As for 'which timer to use', I have no idea. Game-time timers are good in that they make you look at the time in-game and roleplay accordingly; however, it makes for very frequent eating in terms of real-time. Maybe a mix of two? Something like:

'A character must eat and drink at least once an in-game day, unless a player has been on for x time'

All the above, of course, are true for thirst too. I've had the THIRSTY message pop up in a middle of a conversation, so I went to drink, and it broke my quest (the quest was fixed later). I guess the messages should be delayed for conversations too.

Harroghty · Post by **Harroghty** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:19 pm

I have not found the hunger code very bothersome. It does not really interfere with my adventuring so long as I make a point to eat before I go. Yes, I believe that it is imperfect, but I am not sure how you would improve upon this; it is a prompt from players make their own decisions about how to role-play it. I do not agree with trying to force people to role-play it a certain way, but I could maybe go along with decreasing the penalties. You can go days without eating.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:08 pm

Harroghty wrote:I have not found the hunger code very bothersome. It does not really interfere with my adventuring so long as I make a point to eat before I go. Yes, I believe that it is imperfect, but I am not sure how you would improve upon this

Harroghty pretty much sums up how I feel about it right here. Though, I do agree that having to eat a bunch of food (all of which, I think, cost far more than they should) really makes it seem more like a currency money sink than an attempt at realism.

I don't really mind hunger code, but it would be nice if it were retooled so that items had a specific weight:

0 - purely cosmetic; rp. Items with 0 weight just don't affect hunger. This would be things like candy, berries, etc.

1 - meal side items (or lesser foods) such as biscuits, rice, jerky, etc. They can sate hunger, if you eat enough.

2 - heavy foods/meals such as rations, plates of pork, etc. These can sate your hunger with eating one.

Unfortunately, however, this would be a drastic change and would require a lot of coordination between hard and soft code. So, maybe it can be based on an item's coin value. If an item costs >= 1 copper, it's considered cosmetic. If more than 1 copper but less than 1 silver, it falls under the side item category. If it is 1 silver or more, it is considered a heavy food.

Gwain · Post by **Gwain** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:53 pm

I'd have more nourishing food.

Trillarel · Post by **Trillarel** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 6:53 am

I'd take what Selveem suggested or just plainly make all foods more nourishing.

Anguin · Post by **Anguin** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 10:30 am

I'd like to see player-created foods like pizza and tarts be more nourishing/somehow better than store(or inn)-bought food. Make the cook skill more than just cosmetic.

Lirith · Post by **Lirith** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:13 pm

Anguin wrote:I'd like to see player-created foods like pizza and tarts be more nourishing/somehow better than store(or inn)-bought food. Make the cook skill more than just cosmetic.

Yes. It takes a decent bit of time and effort to make these things, and while I really only use them for RP, it would be nice if there was a minor coded benefit to the effort. On the flip side, Lirith is in the habit of eating four in a row and there's no way that is about to change any time soon!

Tarven · Post by **Tarven** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 4:52 pm

Lirith wrote: Yes. It takes a decent bit of time and effort to make these things, and while I really only use them for RP, it would be nice if there was a minor coded benefit to the effort. On the flip side, Lirith is in the habit of eating four in a row and there's no way that is about to change any time soon!

Is that why the recent desc change? I noticed the hips have gotten a bit bigger.

Harroghty · Post by **Harroghty** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 10:53 pm

Tsk. Lirith is gorgeous.

I upgraded the amount of sustenance provided by player made pizza and tarts. Pending copyover to the game port.

Gwain · Post by **Gwain** » Sun Sep 23, 2012 12:15 am

Harroghty wrote:
I upgraded the amount of sustenance provided by player made pizza and tarts.

I can now fulfil my life-long dream of selling halflings as pizza.

Lirith · Post by **Lirith** » Sun Sep 23, 2012 12:24 am

Harroghty wrote:Tsk. Lirith is gorgeous.

I upgraded the amount of sustenance provided by player made pizza and tarts. Pending copyover to the game port.

This makes me very happy. The sustenance, I mean, although the first part is appreciated too. *swoon*

Hunger Code

Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code

Re: Hunger Code