More realistic nutrition/starvation

[D3Volts]

When the green bar is empty, you start losing HP.  It's obnoxiously loud and annoying, the stagger is nonsensical, and worst of all, it just doesn't make sense.

How do you go from well fed, with your balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy, to staggering starvation, literally overnight, while still having maxed out nutrition?

My suggestion is simple.  When the green bar is empty, you start losing HP.  Every green bar.

When your Satiety drops to zero it should start burning your nutrition values, and when they are all zero too, then and only then are you officially starving. Each full bar should take about one day to decay - of course they'd all decay at the same time, at a fixed rate divided between all the bars, so the more bars that are full, the longer they last.

The main effect of this would be you wouldn't have to micromanage your hunger constantly if you have sustainable food sources.  You can go exploring or work on a construction project without the constant loud and obnoxious complaining if you didn't eat anything today. This could make the game a lot more enjoyable.  It would also give you some incentive to eat a varied diet, as it would increase the amount of time before starvation.  A new character could enter the game with some or all of their nutrition bars full or partially full, per server settings, giving them more time to get started (build a shelter maybe?) without having to worry about starving immediately.

 

If you really want to make it fancy, you can scale your health regeneration, work speed, or even movement speed with the nutrition bars.  Each bar could give  a minor buff (or set of buffs).  A full bar gives the full bonus, which scales down linearly as the bar decreases.  Half full, you get half the bonus.  I'm picturing it something like this (but these are just to propose a framework):

Fruits: Simple carbs. +5% movement speed.

Vegetables: Vitamins and minerals. +5% health regeneration.

Grains: Complex carbs. +5% movement speed.

Protein: The building blocks of muscles. +5% work speed.

Dairy: A little bit of everything. +5% health regeneration and work speed.

The total bonus is 10% movement speed, 10% work speed, 10% health regeneration when all bars are full.

 

One last thing...  Please, PLEASE, stop the cacophony of torture when people are starving.  Visual effect?  Ok.  Screen shake?  Ok.  Sound effects.  No. Just no.

[Tom Cantine]

Interesting idea. I rather like the idea of the nutrition bars going next after satiation, and there being some specific buffs/penalties for malnutrition.

That said, that cacophony of torture serves a purpose that I quite appreciate. Starving isn't just losing hit points until you die; it's genuinely debilitating, and a constant distraction. The noise is a part of that, and I think rightly so. It should be harder to concentrate while starving. (Reminds me a bit of Kurt Vonnegut's short story Harrison Bergeron, where the Handicapper General requires people of above average intelligence to wear earpieces that randomly play loud, distracting noises to prevent them from taking unfair advantage of their intellect.)

In my first world, playing sapiens, I died and got respawned a long way from my hovel in the dead of winter. After several such respawns, I finally ended up somewhere I had a chance to run home before sunset, where I knew I had a storage vessel of food. But I was starving and freezing by the time I got there, and it was dark because my fire had gone out long during my prolonged absence. Closed the door against the cold, and it was pitch black inside, so the urgency of groping around to find my firestarter, firewood and food, while shivering and starving, was quite compelling. 

[D3Volts]

4 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

That said, that cacophony of torture serves a purpose that I quite appreciate. Starving isn't just losing hit points until you die; it's genuinely debilitating, and a constant distraction.

It could be made even more debilitating, perhaps, if those small buffs turned into proportional debuffs.  If you have no nutrition and no satiation, you could get a penalty to movement speed and work speed that grows as your health drops, until you can't even move or do anything.  And shortly before you die you just collapse, sit on the ground, and wait for the end.  In single player, it's over at that point - vultures start circling, hungry animals come to stare you down, licking their chops, waiting (or just start eating you alive), but in multi player somebody could bring you food, fend off the animals, maybe even have to feed you and nurse you back to health.

Replace the constant noise with screen shake similar to shivering.  Remove the "hit" and stagger each tick, but make the shaking get progressively worse.  Maybe add involuntary camera wobble like when you're drunk.  That'll make it hard to do things while starving.  The chunky loss of HP accompanied by the pain sound like something hit me detracts from my immersion.  It's really just annoying.  Of course I want it to stop very quickly, but the urgency is more out of frustration than desperation.  If you simply must have a nerveracking sound effect, a continuous repetitive "heartbeat" low HP warning (as seen in Zelda and Metroid) would be a good addition (I have not exactly fond memories of these effectively adding to the tension).  I suppose it's not the noise itself I have a problem with, but that it's the same sound as when something hits me.  I imagine starving to death is a different kind of pain than something attacking you.

Edited May 10, 2025 by D3Volts

[LadyWYT]

Or just change the sound effect for starvation damage and keep the system as-is. It's not particularly realistic, but food isn't a particularly difficult challenge in the game either(under normal circumstances). Generally, you're not going to be in danger of starving to death unless you deliberately neglected your food supply--even less so if realistic starvation rules applied. Having a faster death from starvation damage isn't as realistic, but gives the player a bigger incentive to pay more attention to their food supply as they will quickly die without one.

16 hours ago, D3Volts said:

When your Satiety drops to zero it should start burning your nutrition values, and when they are all zero too, then and only then are you officially starving. Each full bar should take about one day to decay - of course they'd all decay at the same time, at a fixed rate divided between all the bars, so the more bars that are full, the longer they last.

This proposed change doesn't sound too bad, however, I would perhaps drain the nutrition bars at a faster rate than the satiety meter, simply to spur the player to find and secure food.

16 hours ago, D3Volts said:

The main effect of this would be you wouldn't have to micromanage your hunger constantly if you have sustainable food sources.  You can go exploring or work on a construction project without the constant loud and obnoxious complaining if you didn't eat anything today. This could make the game a lot more enjoyable.  It would also give you some incentive to eat a varied diet, as it would increase the amount of time before starvation.  A new character could enter the game with some or all of their nutrition bars full or partially full, per server settings, giving them more time to get started (build a shelter maybe?) without having to worry about starving immediately.

I wouldn't say the system we have now requires much micromanagement. It's easy to bring a crock of stew or several pie slices or some other kind of snack with you on your building projects and other adventures, and the health boost you get from eating a varied diet helps you survive scenarios that would otherwise be lethal. If the hunger rate is too much of a hassle to deal with, there's already an option to turn it down so it's even less of an issue.

This may also sound harsh, but new players should absolutely be worried about to starving to death before worrying about shelter. It's part of the experience, and Vintage Story pulls no punches(though you can determine how hard the game is allowed to hit). While the initial learning curve might be steep, overcoming those challenges is part of what makes the game so satisfying.

16 hours ago, D3Volts said:

If you really want to make it fancy, you can scale your health regeneration, work speed, or even movement speed with the nutrition bars.  Each bar could give  a minor buff (or set of buffs).  A full bar gives the full bonus, which scales down linearly as the bar decreases.  Half full, you get half the bonus.  I'm picturing it something like this (but these are just to propose a framework):

Fruits: Simple carbs. +5% movement speed.

Vegetables: Vitamins and minerals. +5% health regeneration.

Grains: Complex carbs. +5% movement speed.

Protein: The building blocks of muscles. +5% work speed.

Dairy: A little bit of everything. +5% health regeneration and work speed.

The total bonus is 10% movement speed, 10% work speed, 10% health regeneration when all bars are full.

Would be a potentially interesting way to give more benefit to the nutrition bars.

16 hours ago, D3Volts said:

One last thing...  Please, PLEASE, stop the cacophony of torture when people are starving.  Visual effect?  Ok.  Screen shake?  Ok.  Sound effects.  No. Just no.

I wouldn't ditch sound effects entirely, as a sharp sound is a great way to grab the average player's attention and direct it to a problem. What I would do though is change the sound to be less frequent, as well as something more suited to starvation. A loud growl from an empty stomach will grab a player's attention, as well as immediately identify what the problem is...and of course more periodic growls will prompt stubborn players to go eat something in order to stop the noise. Those who disregard the warnings find out that food isn't optional.

[LoveWyrm]

It's the curse that plagues most survival games...cause they play at compressed (sped up time) while still pretending not to.

(In simpler words, it's not 1:1 reallife time or you'd be playing a second life simulator)

And you know what opinion (or if you wanna grant me some insight, phrase that as 'what I learned') has become over the years of playimg them?

it seldomly is the nutrition system, but the cooking and food system (in combination with the inventory) that is the crux.

And the following scenario is the test for it:

If an imp follower accepted food items that drop or you collect, and would passively cook it for you, on the go, while you are out, and give the food to you, perhaps even through an IV so you don't even need inventory for it, or spend time eating it...

Would that make it better?

 

If the answer is yes, and it usually is, at least to me, then it's the cooking/maintenance system that is at fault...and a reason why, should I ever make a survival game (I won't)...

Then I will break 'realism' somehow by giving the player a sort of machine or magical follower that passively turns collected food resources into player fuel.

 

Mods for some games reinforce my thinking. Auto cooking in zomboid, or CDDA, rimworld ...for example...Yuo're probably tedium taxed, not nutrition taxed, but I'm not here to say that the system couldn't be better. I just am of the opinion that a proper fix would have to break the compressed nature of game time. Or be half automated to only require player input at greater (aka slower) intervals.

[D3Volts]

43 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Generally, you're not going to be in danger of starving to death unless you deliberately neglected your food supply--even less so if realistic starvation rules applied.

That's exactly my point.  If you have a secure food supply, a farm with animals, stores of grain and vegetables, it's just a matter of cooking something when you're hungry.  The only risk of starving is forgetting to eat (or bring food), or sacrificing some or all of your nutrition if you're working on a big project, or during an extended exploration or mining venture.  A normal healthy person can go a very long time without eating before they drop dead.

If your only incentive to keep eating is the annoying repetitive sound, it's a problem with the system.  That's why I'm suggesting changes to incentivize nutrition by rewarding the player with buffs, less micromanagement, and stopping that repetitive alarm that is more exasperating than concerning.

If some people don't care about nutrition and are content to view the green bar as a death clock, and tune out the annoying sounds, and just keep doing what they are doing until they die, the buffs would give them an incentive to worry about it.  They can be more productive if they eat more.

56 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I wouldn't say the system we have now requires much micromanagement. It's easy to bring a crock of stew or several pie slices or some other kind of snack with you on your building projects and other adventures, and the health boost you get from eating a varied diet helps you survive scenarios that would otherwise be lethal. If the hunger rate is too much of a hassle to deal with, there's already an option to turn it down so it's even less of an issue.

I think the spirit of it, in a survival game, is to be a challenge to overcome.  However, once you overcome it, a constant insistent reminder becomes an annoyance and adds nothing positive to the gameplay experience.  "You've got a steady food supply?  Great, I guess I'll stop bothering you about it."

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

This may also sound harsh, but new players should absolutely be worried about to starving to death before worrying about shelter. It's part of the experience, and Vintage Story pulls no punches(though you can determine how hard the game is allowed to hit).

You might have missed the "per server settings" bit.  It could be a "yes or no" or it could be a slider.  Starting Nutrition: 0-100.  Default is 0.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I wouldn't ditch sound effects entirely, as a sharp sound is a great way to grab the average player's attention and direct it to a problem. What I would do though is change the sound to be less frequent, as well as something more suited to starvation. A loud growl from an empty stomach will grab a player's attention, as well as immediately identify what the problem is...and of course more periodic growls will prompt stubborn players to go eat something in order to stop the noise. Those who disregard the warnings find out that food isn't optional.

Maybe if you stop eating your stomach could growl once an in-game hour or something to let you know your nutrition is dropping.  A much more subtle reminder.

[D3Volts]

4 hours ago, D3Volts said:

If you simply must have a nerveracking sound effect, a continuous repetitive "heartbeat" low HP warning (as seen in Zelda and Metroid) would be a good addition (I have not exactly fond memories of these effectively adding to the tension).

Flies.  The sound of flies swarming around you, with increasing intensity as you get closer to death, would be a nice creepy cringey atmospheric effect.

[Thorfinn]

Or just eat a snack now and then. Kinda like everyone does irl...

[LadyWYT]

20 hours ago, D3Volts said:

I think the spirit of it, in a survival game, is to be a challenge to overcome.  However, once you overcome it, a constant insistent reminder becomes an annoyance and adds nothing positive to the gameplay experience.  "You've got a steady food supply?  Great, I guess I'll stop bothering you about it."

 

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Or just eat a snack now and then. Kinda like everyone does irl...

Hence why it's a challenge to overcome--just because you have a handle on it doesn't mean it goes away entirely. You can have the best food supply in the world, but it doesn't really matter if you don't eat it. The player won't die immediately if they run out of satiation; they'll have a short window of time to find something to eat before they die, but that ticking health meter seriously puts on the pressure to fix that problem. The player starvation noises can get annoying, yes, hence why I suggested a change of sound effect might be in order. But there should be some sort of sound effect to go with the hunger damage to help alert the player to the problem immediately.

A new player might starve to death because they don't yet have a grasp on how to secure enough food. If a veteran player starves to death because they were too lazy to take a snack break, that's on them.

[Maelstrom]

Occassionally I'm out and about doin' my thing and forget to eat for extended periods.  Then I get that sound of pain and I look around for an aberrant drifter (which doesn't exist) and then I think to look at my hunger which is now flashing red and a deadly black box.  After taking time to break my fast I'm back to whatever I was so absorbed in previously.  Moral of the story?  That audible sound is a good thing (imo).

[D3Volts]

On 5/11/2025 at 7:06 PM, LadyWYT said:

A new player might starve to death because they don't yet have a grasp on how to secure enough food. If a veteran player starves to death because they were too lazy to take a snack break, that's on them.

Being busy does not conflate to being lazy.  People want to do things.  Experience things.  Meaningful things, like building, exploring, delving into caves, sailing around in a boat.  Managing hunger constantly is only a "thing" until it's not.  After you've got a secure food supply, indicated by full nutrition, it's demoted to a chore - one that distracts you from things you want to be doing.  It's now relegated to undesirable micromanagement.  So this is essentially a quality of life change.  It would just turn the nutrition bars into an additional buffer before you starve.  They would take just as long to fill as they do now, and if you don't eat they would degrade just as fast as your satiety.  You'll still want to eat a balanced diet regularly to keep your satiety full and keep from burning your nutrition, but if you don't have the resources for a balanced diet you won't be able to keep those bars full.  If you're still in the gameplay loop of eating whatever you find to keep from starving, this change will not really affect that.  If someone is lazy or forgetful or too busy to eat, when they do start starving they will have wasted all of their nutrition, and that's really going to feel bad because those bars do not fill up quickly.  But if they're aware of that, and they don't care, and they want to do things, yes, that is on them.

If the bonus HP you get from nutrition is already serving as this buffer, allowing you to survive a little longer without food, consider taking away the bonus HP.  Also, consider adding a tooltip to the nutrition bars so you can see what bonuses each one is giving you.

9 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Then I get that sound of pain and I look around for an aberrant drifter (which doesn't exist) and then I think to look at my hunger which is now flashing red and a deadly black box.

I'm not saying take away the alert, I'm saying make it unique so you don't panic and look for something attacking you when you're just hungry.