KingMonkey

Hal13, Those are all really good ideas. The hunger/nutrition states and resulting effects you describe are quite clear (I can almost see the code). I applaud your ability to highlight the key conditionals in the middle of a description. I would not want to try to explain that to a new or young player. I'm also not sure if having the hunger bar lag eating would improve gameplay since people seem to be confused by hidden variables or delays. The idea of caloric intake requirements being higher when well fed or lower while malnourished is great and would probably not even be consciously noticed but would feel correct. If the nutrition bars gave a more substantial and obvious benefit (max health, healing rate, speed, etc.) and at the same time dropped more quickly when the hunger bar was empty, people would see an increased value for food. Skipping lunch would not put a normally well fed character in danger (or have the annoying damage sounds), but might undo a day or two of work toward gaining the benefits from improved nutrition. Just like you said, actual damage (starving) should occur when both the hunger bar and nutrition bars are empty. Effectively, I see an opportunity in the nutrition bars as a foodstuff differentiated time integrated hunger bars that give meaningful benefits if high. The nutrition bars would be what really affects gameplay, while the primary hunger bar indicates your the opportunity to fill them up. I'm not aiming at high realism here, just gameplay mechanics that give people another thing to strive toward. Not that I suggest it, but the different nutrition bars could even give different benefits e.g. protein -> bonus health, fruit -> bonus speed. This verges on "too much of a game mechanic" to me, but some people like that sort of thing and it would encourage a balanced diet. Maybe all nutrition gives bonus health initially and then other different bonuses start above 50% or 75% on a per-bar basis?

I like this idea. I would also be happy with a lower damage rate/frequency and a less jarring application of hunger damage. Right now taking hunger damage often causes me to look around for a drifter throwing rocks before I realize what is happening. To make hunger worse, have "starving" drop the nutrition bars at an increased rate. Maybe this already happens and I never noticed. Slow sapping of health and reduction of maximum health due to shrinking nutrition bars coupled with an "I'm hungry" complaint sound instead of the current damage received action would be great. This would be similar to how it works in "The Long Dark", and hunger works well in that game. You take some passive damage slowly and lose benefits of being well fed, but it's not the same as falling or getting hit. In TLD I think you die from starving in about 4 days, but that is probably too long for VS. Adding a scaling of running speed based on overall nutrition might be as valuable to a lot of players as scaling health.

Does that mean the walking rate is about 10k blocks per in game day? (208 blocks)/(1 IRL min) = (408 blocks)/(1 in game hour) = (10k blocks)/(1 in game day)

Some level of connection between waypoints would be a great feature. I use the Campaign Cartographer mod and it puts something like @(x, y) in the description for translocator. If that text was considered some form of markup, it could be displayed as a link that when clicked would re-center on the map view on the location (x, y). The link would make map traversal much easier without the need for adding new graphical elements to the map. Either way, lines on the map or "re-center the map @(x,y)" links would both assist in navigation. Lines would look good but adding controls to allow a human to draw a line on a map might be a real hassle. Re-center links might be easier and a more generic solution that would support other use cases that nobody has thought about. Without painful UI work these would probably not be used by a human and would only be there to support mods.