I don't know if I want to add hunger to my game.
It would add a certain element to the gameplay, and whole new line of objects (foods) to be added.
What do you think about having hunger in games and what elements in hunger systems do you prefer?
ID:153539
 Oct 24 2003, 11:51 am
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Oct 24 2003, 12:12 pm
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Loduwijk
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Hunger is allways good to have in a game. It makes it more realistic, and forces the players to keep stocked with food which is good in my oppinion, especially if you have time pass in the game. It adds a lot to the exploring factor as well since you cannot simply walk around untill monsters reduce your hit points to a critical level.
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The problem with hunger in games is that most games do it very lazily -- they just use one variable, hunger, and when that variable gets all the way full, you starve and die.
Personally, I think food in games should be extended such that a particular food item conveys a certain amount of nutrients, has a ratio of nutrients to mass (so you might have to eat ten nulberries to get the same nutrition as one edelberry), and has a level of flavour associated with it. Not many people will eat gruel, even though it's absolutely without a doubt healthy. | |
What do you think about having hunger in games and what elements in hunger systems do you prefer? Uh what type of game are you doing and what is the focus? A hunger system in an asteroids game would be kinda pointless, but neccessary in an exploration type of game since it limits the bounds of your exploration until you can increase your food to consumption ratio :). Same thing goes for most of the questions you asked since in some games it makes sense to limit inventory like in a trading game where one of the big plusses of having a new ship is to be able to transport more. In a hack n slash game where you're constantly getting lots of cool magical items it's a complete annoyance to have a limit to your inventory. It doesn't add to the challenge of the game just how often you have to head back and forth between selling points. The amount of health recovered in an inn also depends on the type of game and the feel you want to present. | |
hrmm sounds very interesting!
I could have a complex system of hunger... First of all certain foods would give certain amounts of nutrients which would restore hunger. hrmm a little to complex for my brain right now :P Second there could be types of food, meat, vegetables, and fruit. Which would need to be properly balanced out to get the full potential from your player. and Third there could be a constitution status which would allow players to gain more sustainance from the worst tasting foods | |
its hack n' slash I guess :P
but areas are pretty large and their aren't too many enemies in non-dungeon areas | |
Another aspect is the expiry date :P
Food should only be able to last so long. Otherwise a player could walk into the shop, buy 99 bread rolls and not bother about hunger for the next few months. I also agree with Spuzzum that poorly done Hunger systems aren't great. But a complex system would be VERY complex. How would you put through the affects of all the different types of mal-nutrition and how would the math work? I intend on using a basic Hunger system in my upcoming game and unless a complex Hunger libary is produced by one of the BYOND Masters I do not intend on making it very complex at all. ~Ease~ | |
It would not take a byond master to make such a library. That aside, a hunger library would not be that great. Hunger would be like a battle system, it would vary highly from game to game. Thus, a hunger system would make a better demo than a library.
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Personally, I think food in games should be extended such that a particular food item conveys a certain amount of nutrients, has a ratio of nutrients to mass (so you might have to eat ten nulberries to get the same nutrition as one edelberry), and has a level of flavour associated with it. Not many people will eat gruel, even though it's absolutely without a doubt healthy. Whoa. This seems absolutly nuts unless you're doing some kind of educational eating simulation. In any other game it would amount to a largely tedious micromanaging level of gameplay that would annoy most players to no end. Handling hunger itself in most games is quite annoying in itself unless it is important for the gameplay much less having the player keep track of the health value/enjoyment factor of foods. If you ever payed attention to the millions of Sim games Will Wright made only a few turned out to be very popular. Mainly The Sims which was an awful simulation. It was fun because most aspects(unlike the other sim games) were abstracted to the point that they were simple to maintain. The challenge was derived from managing your schedule to maintain only a handful of needs while at the same time trying to make money. The key to great entertaining gameplay is to limit the source of your challanges to a small easy to balance amount. The more you add the harder things become to balance. The more unbalanced(as far as difficulty pacing is concerned) the game is the less fun it becomes. | |
I really don't plan on haveing more than 3 types of malnutrition. As long as a player eats fruits veggies and meat the player will have close to full status(not eating properly results in lowered status).
I don't really like expiration dates... lol | |
I guess BYOND Master was not exactly what I meant. I meant someone with sufficient skill and great knowledge or resources on nutrition and mal-nutrition. And I only meant the libary for effects and different types of food. As in how eating 2 cooked salmon would differ from eating raw elephant hide.
~Ease~ | |
I don't think that's necessarily overly complex or tedious. Most MUD eating systems just give a food a nutrition var, and act like it's the same thing as fillingness... when you eat something filling, you get a lot of fuel, and when you're full, you're "all stocked up" against hunger. Adding a second variable to both players and food means you could make a nutrient wafer (very nutritious but not filling at all) or junk food (filling but not nutritious), adding a little extra variety to the game world without much complexity.
This, of course, is what Hedgerow Hall does, and it also has a flavor system... a flavor system doesn't have to be anything more than a "flavor" system... i.e., you get a message like, "That tastes good!" or "Yuck!" when you eat something... little touch, adds atmosphere to the game | |
I don't think that's necessarily overly complex or tedious. Most MUD eating systems just give a food a nutrition var, and act like it's the same thing as fillingness... when you eat something filling, you get a lot of fuel, and when you're full, you're "all stocked up" against hunger. Adding a second variable to both players and food means you could make a nutrient wafer (very nutritious but not filling at all) or junk food (filling but not nutritious), adding a little extra variety to the game world without much complexity. This depends entirly on the game. As Vermolius pointed out his game is a hack n' slash game. So he should focus on adding challange to combat not mundane things. If I'm playing a racing game but have to have my character stop and eat a snack during the race and thus need to learn a largely different set of game mechanics I'm going to be annoyed. In a game where this level of detail pertains to the primary gameplay it'll be good, but you shouldn't have too many different sets of game mechanics as it can overwhelm a player which generally isn't good. | |
If you're making a racing game, any hunger system is going to be unnecessary mechanics that distract from gameplay... my point is that using two variables for hunger instead of one and adding even a purely cosmetic/roleplay flavor variable doesn't increase the complexity enough to add a substantive change... either hunger adds to the game or it detracts from it.
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If you're making a racing game, any hunger system is going to be unnecessary mechanics that distract from gameplay... my point is that using two variables for hunger instead of one and adding even a purely cosmetic/roleplay flavor variable doesn't increase the complexity enough to add a substantive change... either hunger adds to the game or it detracts from it. Well the cosmetic value makes sense in your case, but in a game like uncharted waters food was used as an exploration constraint. In which case just having a set amount of food and a set consumption rate makes sense. My main point is something that is more complicated isn't nessesarily more entertaining/challanging. Just because you can implement something doesn't mean you should. You should never implement something just because it's more realistic unless of course you're making a simulation not a game. | |
Actually, I think the opposite. Having a basic food system just adds needless keypresses to the character, forcing the character to type in "eat biscuit" every 30 minutes (i.e. the food system of most MUDs). With a more advanced food system, the player must consciously consider the impact of food on his or her character and must make food choices which are selectively accurate to his/her character's needs.
[edit] This also plays into the fact that with a typical game, food is either something you have enough of, or something that you don't have enough of. In other words, when you start the game, eating food is a challenge. However, once you start advancing in the game, obtaining food is not a problem, and it becomes a nuisance. The way I see it, either you (the general you, not you specifically) add a detailed system to a game, or you don't add the system to the game. Detail != complexity. | |
Spuzzum wrote:
Actually, I think the opposite. Having a basic food system just adds needless keypresses to the character, forcing the character to type in "eat biscuit" every 30 minutes (i.e. the food system of most MUDs). With a more advanced food system, the player must consciously consider the impact of food on his or her character and must make food choices which are selectively accurate to his/her character's needs. Making it more complex just means I need to make a more complex trigger to automatically handle eating :P. The way I see it, either you (the general you, not you specifically) add a detailed system to a game, or you don't add the system to the game. Detail != complexity. Some times a simple system is only there to act as a constraint. Like the example of food in uncharted waters I've mentioned several times. Food doesn't need to be more complex since it's only there to limit how far you can go and how much cargo you can carry per distance without ports between. Just because a system isn't complex doesn't mean it doesn't add to the game and making it more complex doesn't neccessarily make the game more interesting. Making the right decision as to how complex something needs to be is a challanging game design decision. Assuming something should be complex just because you can make it that way is just bad design philosophy. | |
The way I see it, either you (the general you, not you specifically) add a detailed system to a game, or you don't add the system to the game. Detail != complexity. You're coming up with a whole lot of non-sequiturs there. Never did I say that something should be complex just because you can make it that way. Something should be detailed because you're giving your system more conscious thought than "I want to have a [such-and-such] system". [edit] In short, it depends on the game. In an abstraction like an adventure/strategy game such as the example you keep bringing up, food doesn't need to be complex because it has no direct effect on the body. In games with more intimate details like RPGs, however, food doesn't serve as a limiter -- it serves as an additional consideration for players to think about. To make that consideration less than useless, it has to require conscious thought on the part of the player to prevent the player from just throwing it away as another game mechanic. | |