Hunger...

[Gando]

What is it good for? I have a wraith who while waiting for sunlight so he could SEE the dungeon entrances had to eat 10 times...does that sound right to anyone? Hunger is way overrated. It is a good thing I had alot of rations on hand or I'd have suffered from the ole death by hunger routine.

[Variaz]

You know, is it even necessary to keep food at all in this game? It's more of an annoyance than a threat, and it does no good whatsoever, other than interrupt resting. I had thought about removing it since it serves no purpose other than annoy.

Plus, at level 100+, you would assume that your character has become pretty much an immortal god who wouldn't even need to eat anyway.

You know, you can bring down hordes of the most magical and ethereal beings ever, you can become immune to the nuclear weapon(100% resist Fire and Radio!), you can CAST nuclear weapons, you can perform 100+ attacks in one turn, you can move at near light speed, you can cause an earthquake and a big blaze with a single shot of a gun... And yet, if you forget to eat your sandwich, you're gonna die.

[Frumple]

It's more a feature of the genre than anything else. There's not appreciable 'game' aspect to it, outside of occasional annoyance, but there's no big issue to dealing with it, either. Some RLs do more with it than others (and some RL developers have made very good arguments for a hunger system's inclusion), but it's really just an "I'm here" thing more than anything else.

Getting rid of it wouldn't make much of a difference, imo, but that's just because it doesn't make much of a difference anyway. A stack of 99 statisfy hunger scrolls costs less that 2k gold, last time I paid attention -- most of the time, the first dungeon run I do nets me enough gold to buy a good 40 or 50 scrolls, stuff most of them in my house, and not have to ever worry about it again. Port's even better about trivilizing it than most RLs (that actually have a hungerr system) -- those scrolls are cheap and anything that drops a corpse can be chopped up and eaten.

Ah, anyway, that's my $0.10.

[Variaz]

Food would be useful if the game was more of a survival game. I know some RL are like that, and managing food is part of the challenge. I remember a good old dungeon crawler called Dungeon Master, a pretty old but still extremely fun game, one of the first pseudo-3D first person dungeon crawlers. You had to manage your food though the game's 13 levels and puzzles, and as you got deeper and deeper, food and water management became very important. And fun too!

But Port being what it is, it's, as you said, little more than an "I'm here" thing. However, it can be annoying, so perhaps we should consider removing it.

[Gando]

well I dont mind it much normally...it is mainly when waiting for sunlight that it becomes annoying.

[Frumple]

I'd advocate its removal, myself. I understand where it comes from, but it's never made sense to me that these ye' olde adventurer types can't survive in their chosen workplace without constantly be reminded to eat something, or that there needs to actually be edible things involved, rather than just a 'sit, idiot, eat' command that took like a round or 10 at the outside.

I've got similar issues with ammo and a lot of other little utility-type things, to be honest, but that's neither here nor there.

[sekira]

ok, everyone do a screenshot... I'm agreeing with Gando!

I think the hunger/food system should be removed completely, and wouldn't that free up som real estate on the screen? Maybe it would make the damage display easier to format or something like that...

If you think about it... In most games that I personally enjoy, if food exists at all, it is just a very low powered and cheap method of healing (magic healing is higher powered and more expensive), food isn't something that must be done regularly for survival.

[Variaz]

Maybe it would make the damage display easier to format or something like that...

Definitely! That's a VERY good reason to take it away. I personally like the damages counter to the left better than to the right, and it wouldn't mask any important values anymore.

[Keeper]

I agree, food is more an annoyance rather than a feature.

[Variaz]

It will be removed in the upcoming upload.

[grindorin]

Hunger also affects the 'Slow Digestion' and 'Fast Regeneration' properties of items. These will prolly need to be changed/removed as well.

[Variaz]

Well, regeneration won't be removed, it just won't penalize you.

Slow Digestion, I guess, will be gone.

[kingmonkey]

Ah the good old hunger. I started up a new character and ran around for a while gaining the first couple of levels. All was going well. I've found "bee sting" and started leveling it already. I've planned my character a little ahead and looking forward to making a kick-ass hero. And then I started getting hungry. It was only mild hunger at first and easy to overlook so it wasn't much of a concern. Strangely I noticed there were no rations of food in my inventory. Odd. Never mind, I'm only a couple levels deep.

I decide to make my way to town and buy some food from the general store. Now the hunger is really starting to kick in and I'm getting weak. Almost there and I'm fainting with weakness. I have looked for monsters to slay along the way to hack up corpses, alas, to no avail. Finally I breathe a sigh of relief when I see the town in front of me! I enter the general store and buy.. hold on a second, no food! That's a bit unusual. Never mind, there's the scroll shop, I'll just get a scroll of satisfy hunger, except they don't have them. Pulling at straws I decide to go to the tavern! They will satiate my hunger. I order about 20 ales, walk outside the tavern and die of starvation. Bartender could've given me more then a teasthingy of ale!

There you go. Defeated by the most ravenous beast in the kingdom. My own belly.

[Variaz]

Err... was this in a previous release? I don't even think the food variables are even there anymore... couldn't happen in the current build...