Food and Energy System

[sf17k 4]

I never liked Minecraft's food system. It's complicated, arbitrary, and doesn't make sense. You have to know that food must be close to full to regenerate health, (though strangely, regenerating health does not deplete any food). And you have to know that sprinting and jumping use up food, and you need at least 3 food to sprint. PLUS, there's a hidden variable called "saturation". This needs to be reworked.

Food Simplified

The first variation of my suggestion is something I've implemented in my own mod. It's dead simple to implement and understand: Health regenerates slowly whenever the food bar is not empty, using up food at the same rate that health is gained. Starving does not cause you to lose health.

This way, food acts as an intermediate "buffer" for health, like having a full stomach and needing to digest in order to heal and be able to eat again. This is fun and makes intuitive sense. And it causes you to be more careful about taking minor damage like fall damage, because it translates to food consumption.

Energy

The second variation adds a third bar, energy. Food slowly digests into energy, and energy slowly digests into health. On top of that, player actions use up energy. For example, walking slowly drains energy. Sleeping allows you to digest food and regenerate health without having to actually wait around for it.

This mechanic makes the game feel drastically more realistic, for better or for worse. In real life, you get tired doing most actions, even walking. With this mechanic, the player starts to think about the distance he walks and the actions he takes, trying to minimize them in order to save energy. Instead of exploring freely at any time of day, you will first pause to plan out the optimal path. You will go in the morning to make sure that you can sleep when you run out of energy at the end of the day. And you may even have to start preparing the day before, as it could take all night to heal and digest food. The game will probably consist of cycles of strenuous activity and passive activity. Go gather food, wood, and ores during the day, always keeping an eye on your gradually-draining energy to calculate how much you'll need for the tasks ahead. Then, when you have only enough energy to get home safely, head back to your shelter to cook your food and smelt your ores, and eat and rest. While you're doing all that, your statuses will slowly climb back up to prepare you for the next day of work and adventure.

Conclusion

It seriously changes the game when you're no longer so free to run around anywhere as you please. The first variation is a safer (and easier) change, but it depends on what Bioxx likes.

I want to note that I've made a small wilderness survival game myself, where I've had the opportunity to think about things like this, and played with similar mechanics.

EDIT: It's also possible to use the energy mechanic without making walking take up energy. Although, I wonder what actions should take up energy. Mining already feels hard because it takes such a long time. So does breaking leaves. Monsters spawn endlessly so it seems somewhat unfair that attacking them would use up your limited energy. Perhaps destroying blocks can be made quick or near-instant to account for this (which would also help remove some of the grindy aspect). In my game, actions were instantaneous and it still felt "heavy" to take a hit on my energy bar, so I had to be careful which actions I took and when.

I really don't expect Bioxx to implement energy, but I'd be happy to see the first idea! It's easy to code, and doesn't need any balancing!

[barkingnoise 19]

It would also give more incentive to use alternate transportation, like boats (or rails) that doesn't use up energy.

Sleeping allows you to digest food and regenerate health without having to actually wait around for it.

This would optimally require it to function like Somnia, right?

[Michidez 9]

I like this, I have got the simply horses mod now, and with that change it would be mutch more important to have that horse.

[Conoreva 2]

Great Idea.

[hoseja 23]

I'm zombieposting here but I was searching forums if anyone came up with the same idea I had. The energy mechanic could be simplified to just hunger depleting. The hunger bar is used up way too slowly right now, when you for example dig all day it becomes noticeable. Such strenuous physical activity should require massive amounts of food.

[Euphoric 48]

Damn, I made similar suggestion in TFC2 subforum and it got deleted. Also, if you want to search, you should search for "stamina" instead of energy.

 

I really think it should be only one meter. Name it hunger, stamina, etc.. doesn't matter. But combining hunger bar, thirst bar, and adding new one is IMO not good idea. Food and drink should work together to replenish stamina in some way. Primitive and simple food would only sate you, but if you prepared good and high-quality food, it would boost your stamina. Anything you do would reduce the stamina and heavy work would reduce it even more. This would make huge reason for mechanical devices. Using power of water, wind, animals or steam instead of your own stamina would be huge.

 

But it would be extra hard to balance, because even know early-game can be problematic and requires lots of monotonous hard work (cutting trees, mining, forging, etc..). But on the other side, it would make things less monotonous, because you could do less because stamina would be the limiting factor in game. And it could provide much more realistic simulation of how hard was to create wrought iron.

[Ranadiel 5]

I see two serious problems with this idea.

 

1. In the early stages obtaining water is easy, but food not so much. You either have to find and kill some animals or find fruits and vegetables. This is hard when you spawn on a large piece of land without much of water to get squids and/or where you don't have many animals in your vicinity. It would have to be thought over how much each action would deplete the stamina. I wouldn't want to chop a couple trees to have to fill my stamina from 0 to full.

2. I presume that without sleeping not much of stamina/energy would be recovered. Sleeping requires a bed. Unless some new methods of spending the night are implemented, you need to create one in order to sleep. I am playing an SMP world where i haven't found any sheep yet... and believe me, I was searching a lot... Having already smelted various copper tools i make boats and travel very far across the waters, but still am to have the comfort of sleeping in a bed...

 

The whole idea is great, but details matter here.