Food/Hunger Overhaul

[Erik]

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So first of all, why food? We need to ask this question first, before we can design the system, to get the goals we want to archive with the system.

Goals:

1. Simulating reality and therefore adding IMMERSION
2. Survival gameplay where food is necessary for PROGRESSION
3. Making the player PLAN AHEAD and care for his ENVIROMENT
4. Force PLAYER ACTION and building of food INFASTRUKTURE like farms
5. BALANCING MEKANISM for sprinting and other actions
6. Making food NECESSARY but not ANNOYING

These are the goals the current system tries to accomplish. Adding fat may help goal 6. but hurt goal 4. While these goals are good, I think the system could be capible of doing more and therefore creating a richer gameplay experience (depth) without adding too much complexity. Tyron plans to add nutrition values to food and a nutrition system, like the one in TerraFirmaCraft as well as food decay (very comparable to food decay in ARK SE).

Future goals:

7. Forcing player to use MULTIPLE FOOD SOURCES
8. DESTINGLISHING different types of food
9. Making INFASTRUKTURE necessary and extending/adding PROGRESSION
10. Forcing the player to USE MORE GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS (farming, breeding animals, fishing)
11. Allowing for more COMPLEMENTARY GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS (creating meals, perservation)

The new goals make the food system more engaging and add depth, but also make food a greater part of gameplay, as the player needs to devote more time towards it. Nutrition may also put more emphisis on micromanagement which may become annoying for some players. Now lets take a second to rethink, what's the main purpose of food and what are just causal purposes? Forcing player actions is imo the main purpose of food in the current version and while this leads the player to do things that may be fun, the food bar is just a reminder that the player needs to gather some food in some way or the game will punish him. This obviously makes the gameplay less "sandbox"-like, as the player can't just do what he wants, but needs to get food in the first place. Wouldn't it be cool if food would have other uses like extending player customization and having a more direct impact on gameplay?

Then we would need to add some new goals:

12. Extending player and gameplay CUSTOMIZATION and allowing for SPECIALIZATION
13. Extenting the BALANCING MEKANISM to more possible actions
14. Better/more INTERACTION with other gameplay systems (combat, mining...)

How does one reach those goals? I mean like all 14 of them? Fasten your seatbelts! ladies and gentleman, I present to you:

The food effect system

Well, to realise this system, we need to throw everything about the current food system out of the window! Say bye to the hunger bar, say bye to your fat, cause where we'll be going there is no need to be fat and hungry (and no nutrition)!

The first thing the player is going to notice is the new green bar where the hunger bar once was: the stamina bar. Stamina gets used up for actions like combat, mining, sprinting. This allows for a more complex combat system, I may write about it some day. Stamina slowly regenerates.

Health regen is disabled.

Because food can't replenish a non existing hunger bar, it needs to have a new purpose: effects. Eating food adds effects to the player, like increasing the stamina or health pools, increasing the rate of stamina regeneration, making mining faster, adding a speed bonus to the player, regeneration stamina or health instantly, everything is possible! The effects would be handled similar to MC or Skyrim: They have a effect (with modifiers), a duration and a effect location (needs a better name). But what if the player eats a lot of speed berries, wouldn't he become super fast? Well, I told you something about a effect location. The player only has a limited number of effect locations and there are three for food: protein location, carbohydrate location and vitamin location. A piece of food may carry different effects on different locations with different durations. Some foods may only have effects on the protein location, others may only have effects on the vitamin location. A effect location can hold multiple effects of varying duration. When the player eats a piece of food, the effect locations it influences get cleared on the player and the effects get applied afterwards.

Sounds complicated? Well it isn't: The player first eats a berry with the following effects:

Vitamin location:
    fortifyStamina(20):120s
Carbohydrate location:
    fortifySpeed(4%):24s
    regenHealth(1):30s

When the player eats a steak directly afterwards, that carries these effects:

Vitamin location:
    fortifyMining(20%):340s
Protein location:
    fortifyHealth(30):340s

The effects on the player will look like this:

Vitamin location:
    fortifyMining(20%):340s
Carbohydrate location:
    fortifySpeed(4%):24s
    regenHealth(1):30s
Protein location:
    fortifyHealth(30):340s

To make replenishing effects not as annoying, when the player eats a food with matching effects (and modifiers) at that location (the duration doesn't need to be matching), the effect doesn't reset, but its duration gets added to the duration of the effect:

The player eats a berry with the following effects:

Vitamin location:
    fortifyStamina(20):120s
Carbohydrate location:
    fortifySpeed(4%):24s
    regenHealth(1):30s

30 seconds pass.

Now the player eats another berry of this type, with the same effects. The effects on the player will look like this:

Vitamin location:
    fortifyStamina(20):210s
Carbohydrate location:
    fortifySpeed(4%):24s
    regenHealth(1):30s

Now the player eats a berry with the following effects:

Vitamin location:
    fortifyHealth(10):100s
Carbohydrate location:
    fortifySpeed(1%):40s
    regenHealth(1):22s

The effects on the player will look like this:

Vitamin location:
    fortifyHealth(10):100s
Carbohydrate location:
    fortifySpeed(1%):40s
    regenHealth(1):52s

I hope this is depicted in a understandable way.

Creating meals will allow for more precise tuning of your diet and the effects. Food decay can and should still be implemented with this system.

To prevent the player not eating a varied diet or even not eating food at all, empty food effect locations are filled with a negative effect. When the player doesn't have effects in the protein location, a hungry(1) effect with a duration will be added. After the effect expires, a hungryProtein(2) effect with a duration will be added. The hungryProtein(2) effect causes other negative effects without a duration to appear, like slowness(5%). When the effect expires another hungryProtein(n) effect will be added, with worse debuffs, up till hungryProtein(5). The same goes for the vitamin and the carbohydrate location. The player will die instantly if all hungry-effects have reached stage 5.

This is the system and I think it has a lot of potential, is very modifiable and fulfills all 14 goals. The downside of this system is, that it takes much afford to program and needs a lot of balancing (adding effects, assigning effects to every food).

1. Simulating reality and therefore adding IMMERSION
    Yes. (Weakness before starvation ftw!)
2. Survival gameplay where food is necessary for PROGRESSION
    Yes.
3. Making the player PLAN AHEAD and care for his ENVIROMENT
    Yes.
4. Force PLAYER ACTION and building of food INFASTRUKTURE like farms
    Yes. (Debuffs ftw!)
5. BALANCING MEKANISM for sprinting and other actions
    Yes. (Stamina ftw!)
6. Making food NECESSARY but not ANNOYING
    Yes. (Debuffs ftw!)
7. Forcing player to use MULTIPLE FOOD SOURCES
    Yes. (Food effect location trinity ftw!)
8. DESTINGLISHING different types of food
    Yes. (Food effects ftw!)
9. Making INFASTRUKTURE necessary and extending/adding PROGRESSION
    Yes. (Better meals requirering better crops ftw!)
10. Forcing the player to USE MORE GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS (farming, breeding animals, fishing)
    Yes. (Food effect location trinity ftw!)
11. Allowing for more COMPLEMENTARY GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS (creating meals, perservation)
    Yes.
12. Extending player and gameplay CUSTOMIZATION and allowing for SPECIALIZATION
    Yes. (The right meal for the right job ftw!)
13. Extenting the BALANCING MEKANISM to more possible actions
    Yes. (Stamina and food effects ftw!)
14. Better/more INTERACTION with other gameplay systems (combat, mining...)
    Yes. (Stamina and food effects ftw!)

Feedback/ideas/critique are welcome!