20 replies to this topic

[Cykuta]

This is an idea I've had for quite a long time. I think it's not so hard to do, but i admit i know nothing of it

Anyway, how about a small mod that adds a compulsion of eating something every 24-hours or so? If you didn't, a 'hungry" icon would appear on a character's portrait, and a penalty of some sort would be suffered, like it is when the're tired... The mod would add grocery merchants to buy food from before you set out on a journey for small sums (after all, if 40 arrows cost 1 gp...). The penalty could be to THAC0, or movement speed?

(not hard to guess, idea is inspired by those really old 'dungeons' rpgs of yore )

[Philiposophy]

Interesting idea.

Could be a lot of consequences to not eating. Eventually characters would have to die of starvation, I assume, if they had nothing for a long time.

[Epantiras]

I'd play that mod XD
I think "hungry" should have the same penalities of "tired" and cause a temporary -1 to str/dex/con (i.e. physical stats, not mental stats) after a long period without food. The effects would become worse with time, just like "tired". Maybe the hunger could make characters become tired more quickly.
As evolution of this concept, there could be a "thristy" option, however it would make the game unplayable imo ;-) it would turn your NPCs into little craving tamagotchi :-P

[Orthodoxia]

I want this mod! Now, if we could only add the cooking skill when camping outside...

And what's wrong with tamagotchi? You already have to heal, dress them up, make decisions for them and manage their love lives...

[GeN1e]

how about a small mod that adds a compulsion of eating something every 24-hours or so?

That would only add unnecessary routine to gameplay, without improving it in any notable fashion.

[Epantiras]

You already have to heal, dress them up, make decisions for them and manage their love lives...

Aww... I can see your point ;-)

[Jarno Mikkola]

Anyway, how about a small mod that adds a compulsion of eating something every 24-hours or so? If you didn't, a 'hungry" icon would appear on a character's portrait, and a penalty of some sort would be suffered, like it is when the're tired... The mod would add grocery merchants to buy food from before you set out on a journey for small sums.

Ahh, this is why the party is looking for Imoen, she just tastes the best.

I think "hungry" should have the same penalities of "tired" and cause a temporary -1 to str/dex/con (i.e. physical stats, not mental stats) after a long period without food.

Ah, yeah, a starving baby usually become a little weak but is able to keep the calm head all the time, right?

No thanks.

[berelinde]

Sounds like feeding the spirit meter in MotB. That was a colossal pain in the butt. I disabled it first chance I got.

At first blush, it sounds kind of cool, a fun little extra to make the game more immersive. But if you wanted to do that, you'd have to base the food needs on strength. A fighter with a strength of 18/96 needs more food than a mage with a strength of 6. And then, there's that whole "elimination" thing.

I can see it now. You're in the Underdark, you're out of food, and Minsc is on the verge of organ failure because he's dying of starvation, and Valygar gets mugged by some Drow while looking for a place to go.

[Kulyok]

The thing is, we've got very different eating habits ourselves(for example, are you sure that every single person who posted in this topic eats bread?), not to mention different visions of what each NPC's eating habits should be. For example, I'm almost sure Cernd eats very little in human form, and quite a lot - including meat - in another form. I know that neither strength, nor constitution has any bearing on one's real hunger. And I'm also quite sure a few days' fast does nothing for an expert warrior's skills, if he knows what he's doing.

And, yes, anything that makes the game less convenient will probably be unpopular. Well, not as popular as "Remove XP Cap" or "Dungeon Be Gone".

[Aeryn]

Personally, I think remembering to eat in real life is enough responsibility for me. This is a cute idea, but I think it would get old after a few...minutes. Now, eating as an optional deal, and certain foods giving you a temporary stat boost would be something I could enjoy...

And berelinde, I know exactly what you mean about MotB...my first play-through I told myself I had to put up with it to "fully experience" the game...but every play-through after that, first thing I did was find the code to keep it maxed. >.<

[sotona]

I'd like this mod, but without serious penalties like loosing stats, thus removing the necessity of feeding your PC. This mod should provide a role-playing ability to eat, but if you do not want to, it should not be the problem. Just for fun

[Daulmakan]

That would only add unnecessary routine to gameplay, without improving it in any notable fashion.

[xdeathplanetx]

the ideas is really fine... but dies and penality not.... there can also be added food as extra iteam with unknow benefit/penalities whan u use them...

[Azkyroth]

While I echo everyone else's sentiments on the desirability of adding this feature, it's worth noting that while the penalties you propose would be simple-enough to implement...

If you didn't, a 'hungry" icon would appear on a character's portrait,

...this is non-trivial from a technical perspective. As I recall the bams that contain these "status" icons are nearly full and there's a pretty decent chance that the commands to call those icons are hard-coded (IE, the game's "display status icon" command will only recognize the "icons" that are already there as frames, even if you add more frames), similar to the insufferable state of the musiclist, so you might have to replace one of the existing statuses and then you'd have to figure out which one - which would be problematic since I believe the description text that appears on the character sheet screen actually is hard-coded.

Anyway, you'd have to figure out which script all this would go in and there'd be potential complications with penalties not getting set correctly in scripts for characters who were disabled, etc.

[Leila]

Sounds like feeding the spirit meter in MotB. That was a colossal pain in the butt. I disabled it first chance I got.

Heh, I actually loved it. :S

As for the mod itself... it'd be interesting, I suppose, but I'm not sure how much it'd actually add to the game unless you applied bonuses to Constitution for maintaining a well-balanced diet or something. But then again, there are people who love micro-managing, so those who -don't- like it don't have to install it, of course. But you have to take into account that food doesn't last forever... it could end up being very tedious to manage, and if you were doing a mod based on realism (having to eat) then making food never spoil would be kind of silly.

[Epantiras]

I'd like this mod, but without serious penalties like loosing stats, thus removing the necessity of feeding your PC. This mod should provide a role-playing ability to eat, but if you do not want to, it should not be the problem. Just for fun

Once again, compromise seems the best choice ;-)

[Jarno Mikkola]

(for example, are you sure that every single person who posted in this topic eats bread?)

Yeah, but I am quite sure that you all eat some kind of carbon compound that when united with O² releases energy. Unless someone of you proclaim to be a descendant of the chemosynthesistic life forms, and even there the process is quite similar.

Why bread is usually the energy source for the traveler in many worlds? Is, that one usually can make it so, that it stores and is eatable during long journeys, it's not cause it has everything, but cause it has most of them... cause you do not need it to have everything on your journey, but just the most... aka energy.

[Epantiras]

I've got an idea! Use beans to cast Stinking Cloud or - even worse - Cloudkill! XD
Please forgive me.

[Cykuta]

Would it be possible to create food items that would cancel the fatigue effect, then? Instead-of-resting like. Could be useful, especially when you get your cleric to cast restoration... And no need to add new status icons

[Azkyroth]

Would it be possible to create food items that would cancel the fatigue effect, then? Instead-of-resting like. Could be useful, especially when you get your cleric to cast restoration... And no need to add new status icons

Quite easy, actually. It'd be a matter of creating a potion-type item and using the "cure opcode" opcode in its effects, with the opcode for fatigue as the argument. Get DLTCEP which is by a wide margin the most intuitive editor if you're accustomed to GUI (IE, Windows) systems, install it per instructions, and open one of the "POTN" items (IE, POTN09) and take a look at it in the editor to see how it works.

You could also fiddle with scripting a bit to have characters refer to being hungry on certain timetables (you'd want to use the text-over-head action, probably; I forget which that is), as well as the "normal" fatigue thing, but that take significantly more work. You could even set local variables for the characters to interact with scripting to make them "hungry" after an elapsed time since the last meal, with the timer reset by eating. The portrait icon is the thing that I'm most skeptical about, actually...

Though I still don't think very many people are going to install this mod, honestly.