eating - drinking feature

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You definitely will have to eat and drink in Redemption. But I want to know which way you would like this feature more:

When the Avatar is hungry / thirsty
1.) you have to feed him manually
2.) he will automatically eat /drink what he has in his backpack (= you only have to take care that there is something available in the inventory

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Corv Dragon
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Leader of The Titans of Ether
Director, Writer, Scripter and Worldbuilder

Last edited by Corv on Tue Sep 13, 2021 9:08 am; edited 4 times in total

Game Trophies

I’d prefer to have to feed him manually. IMHO, it is more immersive that way (with potential influence on his health state modifying his capacity to think or to see clearly, etc…). If the Avatar is not alone, the others may automatically eat /drink (part of their AI) what they have in the inventory making them more alive and self-governing.

Even if the second option is chosen, it could be as well of some interest to take care that the food don’t get rotten (natural process in time for fresh food bough on market for example) or get poisoned or get ruined (if you travel in the middle of a swamp, it may happen.)

To modify the “quality” of the food could also lead to a laughable situation like making a guard runs to the “backhouse” or whatever he could find that fits his business rofl

. Well that doesn’t sound very virtuous, but that looks worth the thinking (it can be seen as an act of resistance after all). The avatar or his party could suffer similar issues if not for the same cause (or maybe for the same cause ? Mr. Green

)

what about handling it like ultima 6 did - your party may camp at night and everyone automatically eats. I found it very annoying to keep manually feeding complaining party members in U7. Without some kind of automation it just becomes so annoying ... I mean it's supposed to be fun, that's the point right? If not then party members should also complain about "needing to pee", having rocks in the their boots and countless other things Wink

psmurf wrote:

what about handling it like ultima 6 did - your party may camp at night and everyone automatically eats. I found it very annoying to keep manually feeding complaining party members in U7. Without some kind of automation it just becomes so annoying ... I mean it's supposed to be fun, that's the point right? If not then party members should also complain about "needing to pee", having rocks in the their boots and countless other things Wink

Thanks for your thoughts on this, but "fun" is something very different for each person. Else it would not be difficult to find the right thing to do. Some don't want that at all... why eat and drink? What if someone doesn't camp - does he then not need to eat? Why do you have to camp? Because you have to sleep? but then again, when you have to sleep anyway then the eating / drinking need will be obsolete (beside that you have to have soemthing to eat and drink with you once a night). It is not that easy.

The fun of having to eat/drink more than once a day is that you have to prepare before you go out into a dungeon or a region where you don't have a tavern right aound the corner. Either you prepare in a way that you take enough food with you, or that you have everything to hunt, like maybe traps and something to cook meat in etc.. It adds to the roleplaying experience. That's the idea behind it.

It is decided that it will be one of the two ways above, so its easier for all of you to choose Wink

Welcome on the board btw! Smile

_________________
Corv Dragon
-=(UDIC)=-
Leader of The Titans of Ether
Director, Writer, Scripter and Worldbuilder

I always found it very entertaining when my companions got hurt by hunger in U7, and I can't actually remember finding it boring or "unfun" to feed my beloved friends.

But if I can't use "create food" then I won't play the game. I'll only end up starving to death in some dungeon. Adventure preparations isn't my kind of thing. Smile

At least I think so, but it never was a problem in U7 to don't have enough food, it was just to enter a house or a tavern and fill the backpacks. Very nice people, those brittannians. Smile

I've always said that to include eating and drinking it has to be done in the right way so I usually say no to it. But in this case I believe Corv can pull it off so that it will indeed be fun to feed yourself. Thus this will be my first and only time I'll say yes to manual eating and drinking. Wink

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-Grogdon
Worldbuilder for Titans of Ether

The idea of having to prepare for an expedition is half the fun of actually exploring. Bow check; arrows check; wine check; food check; torch.... Damn, I knew there'd be something. There's ALWAYS something! *trudges back to Britain* Laughing

Besides, I get the impression that it's a tad impolite to venture into Deceit, run into a headless, start to get hunger pains and then politely ask "do you mind if we put this one hold while I have a bite to eat? I'm slightly peckish!" I like the thought of having plan ahead and find a nice, quiet hole in the wall to set up your picnic. Laughing

I'd go for manual for one thing. Quests. What if you have a quest to pick up pumpkins, but your party decides to eat them before you can deliver. It always annoyed me when in SI my party drank the ice wine that was a clue to getting my equipment back. I ended up putting it (and the pumpkin :p ) in a bag I could drop everytime I used the F key.

Then again, I'm sure you're thinking "Scripting food to be eaten manually would be horrible". So you might wanna go with auto.

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-==Thepal==-

	Thepal wrote:
	Then again, I'm sure you're thinking "Scripting food to be eaten manually would be horrible". So you might wanna go with auto.

No it's not about what is easier to script (else we would not have most of the features we built in Wink

- we are used to torture ourselves to be sure to make a good game). It's really only about what is prefered.

_________________
Corv Dragon
-=(UDIC)=-
Leader of The Titans of Ether
Director, Writer, Scripter and Worldbuilder

Game Trophies

Would it be possible to have manual feeding be the default but have a secondary mod that you could optionally install to make it auto?

Game Trophies

I'm not really a fan of feeding the party manually, because I think it's really irritating to do when the time per day is shortened. If the days are actually going to be full days (like 24 hours of play time to a day), then manual wouldn't be bad. But if the days are going to be crunched, and I'm assuming they will, then I'd find it really annoying to manually feed my party every 15 minutes. In fact, I'd prefer not to need to feed people at all if time is crunched. I think that certain aspects of reality only work well when implemented with other aspects of reality (in this case, necessity to eat and time). I know I'd go insane if I had to go eat something every third of an hour. You should also look at the fact that most people don't need three meals per day. Two meals per day certainly sustained me just fine through college, and I'm sure there are people who only eat one meal per day. And another thing to consider is that people don't eat evenly throughout the day. Since people sleep around eight hours, they don't eat during that time, and most people don't eat dinner right before bed. For instance, I eat dinner at 6PM and don't eat breakfast until about 8AM, which means I go without food just fine for 14 hours... then I eat again at 1PM and back to 6PM, where the cycle began. It would be especially annoying if your characters have to wake up in the night and eat because of a necessity to feed every third of a day. One other thing to consider is that, depending on your timetables of events, a player may need to wait for awhile for something to happen. During this time, it would be nice to have an auto-eat feature so that, for instance, you can have your character rest at an inn for three days and you won't have to interrupt the wait for the sole purpose of eating.

Finally, something to think about: In real life I only have to feed myself manually - NOT other people.

Pyrrian wrote:

I'm not really a fan of feeding the party manually, because I think it's really irritating to do when the time per day is shortened. If the days are actually going to be full days (like 24 hours of play time to a day), then manual wouldn't be bad. But if the days are going to be crunched, and I'm assuming they will, then I'd find it really annoying to manually feed my party every 15 minutes. In fact, I'd prefer not to need to feed people at all if time is crunched. I think that certain aspects of reality only work well when implemented with other aspects of reality (in this case, necessity to eat and time). I know I'd go insane if I had to go eat something every third of an hour. You should also look at the fact that most people don't need three meals per day. Two meals per day certainly sustained me just fine through college, and I'm sure there are people who only eat one meal per day. And another thing to consider is that people don't eat evenly throughout the day. Since people sleep around eight hours, they don't eat during that time, and most people don't eat dinner right before bed. For instance, I eat dinner at 6PM and don't eat breakfast until about 8AM, which means I go without food just fine for 14 hours... then I eat again at 1PM and back to 6PM, where the cycle began. It would be especially annoying if your characters have to wake up in the night and eat because of a necessity to feed every third of a day. One other thing to consider is that, depending on your timetables of events, a player may need to wait for awhile for something to happen. During this time, it would be nice to have an auto-eat feature so that, for instance, you can have your character rest at an inn for three days and you won't have to interrupt the wait for the sole purpose of eating.

You obviously assume that if you have to feed manually you will have to feed them at certain times of the day (like at 8am 12am and 8pm...). But that assumption is wrong. It would be fairly "cheap" to make it this way.

Your character will have some kind of hunger-meter when it is below a certain amount he will get hungry, if it gets lower also some stats get lower because of the hunger. It doesn't mean that you HAVE to feed him immediately, you just have to deal with the consequences. If you feed him the meter will rise according to what you feed him. The more you feed the longer he will be able to go without eating anything else (of course there is a limit too, you cant just pump him full for the rest of the adventure Wink

). This way you have some freedom and control over the hunger problem (challenge). And thats why you of course don't have to get up just to feed someone (I hope you don't really think we are that bad at game design...) Smile

But in the morning you will be most likely hungry. If you don't eat you won't "feel" as good as you would with a full belly (stats) and you will go to work like most of us... Wink

	Pyrrian wrote:
	Finally, something to think about: In real life I only have to feed myself manually - NOT other people.

Well, in real life you are yourself, in Ultima you are the Avatar... and the question is: "what if the Avatar is hungry".

btw:
When you eat automatically it will work similar, only that you can't control how much he eats. But still he will get hungry and you will have to take care that you have food with you. Not having to eat at all is no option, this is a definitiv part of the game design.

_________________
Corv Dragon
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Leader of The Titans of Ether
Director, Writer, Scripter and Worldbuilder

Eating in games is a bloody pain in the ---

Just remove it all-together.

	Fop wrote:
	Just remove it all-together.

Won't happen...

_________________
Corv Dragon
-=(UDIC)=-
Leader of The Titans of Ether
Director, Writer, Scripter and Worldbuilder

I would definitely say feed the Avatar manually & let the other party members feed themselves.
As a side note, I've always loved the cooking aspect of Ultima (hmmm baking a pie...) & I think it is an integral part of the series. The hunting & traps idea is very appealing, too.
Great job & please don't yield, make it an Ultima experience & not some sort of "Ultima for Dummies".

Loic

Last edited by ldaneels on Thu Sep 08, 2021 4:02 pm; edited 1 time in total